Feeding the flame: Nutrition, Queer Desire, and Identity in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Melissa Broder's Milk Fed

Abstract

Jeanette Winterson’s seminal work, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), is here contrasted with Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed (2021) to illustrate how food and diet act as a metaphor for the expression of queer desire and identity across the literary canon. Though published over thirty-five years apart, the two novels are markedly similar in how they use satiation as a way to embody both the restriction and eventual acceptance of queer sexuality, as both Winterson’s .protagonist and Rachel in Milk Fed struggle with diet and identity. This is further expressed through the way both nutrition and sex are interposed with religion and community throughout the texts. Though more explicit in Broder’s work, it becomes clear throughout the course of the essay that food is a way of expressing both utter pleasure and a basic human desire for nourishment in both novels, making it an extremely proficient way of symbolising queer expression.