So can I just say that I had forgotten how much I love "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" by Jeanette Winterson. I had read it in high school when it got slipped into my pile of library books, but with a completely different lens than reading it now. Then I was a kind of screwed up high school student who washed her car every time it got tagged with insults, replaced the window when it got broken into, and managed to survive both physical and emotional violence because of being gay, and didn't sleep much. Now I've grown up, my life is not such a battle as it was then, or as I thought it was then, even in retrospect it's hard to see where the line between reality and perception is, and I am now much more sure of my religious beliefs than I was then, and have actually listened to, and not just heard, the stories of those who were before me, and those who had to fight the battles alone. I had many advantages Jeanette (the character) didn't have, and when I read the book in high school I didn't really think about it, but now I am thinking about it, and the one battle I didn't have to fight, that I don't think I can ever understand how difficult it would have been, was religion. I grew up in a church that accepts me for who I am, not who they think I should be. I know this has had a huge impact on my life, that my God will always be there, even when other people won't. I have lost enough friends for being a lesbian, so I can feel Jeanette there, and my family is also kind of crazy, in a different way than her mother, but nonetheless crazy.

Back on topic, I think I am going to write my research paper using post-colonialism and general feminism (Adrienne Rich, Bonnie Zimmerman) to say that the Jeanette's coming out, so to speak, and the reaction she has to how the church feels about her is a symptom of post-colonialism, with the church she was raised in being the colonizer.