I Dwell in Possibility: A Memoir

by Toni A.H. McNaron

This "brave and lovely" memoir details one woman's transformation from a sheltered white childhood in Jim Crow's Alabama to a self-aware and self-accepting educator, lesbian and recovering alcoholic (Booklist). This expanded and revised edition includes a moving, nuanced portrait of racial identity and relations during the civil rights period and new material on a life lived at history's doors.

Author Biography: Toni McNaron teaches women's studies and English at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. She is coeditor of Voices in the Night: Women Speaking about Incest and The New Lesbian Studies: Into the Twenty-first Century; she is also the editor of The Sister Bond: A Feminist View of a Timeless Connection.

216 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1992

Reviews

[Shelley Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: Toni McNaron was my teacher at university, some four decades ago. I fell in love with her then, at her honesty as an out lesbian and as an equally out feminist.

This is a very accessible memoir, from her key relationship with her mother, through her university studies as a closeted lesbian, and her struggles with and alcoholic, to finding and celebrating her voice and vision. I read it in one seating. Included are scenes of growing up in the 1950s in heavily segregated Alabama, including witnessing at 19 the brutal treatment of Black Civil Rights activists; stories of the emerging lesbian community in Minneapolis in the late 1960s and 1970s; and the difficulties of being a woman and a lesbian within an academic setting.

It is an intensely personal and honest memoir, with the examination of her relationship with her mother central. I would have preferred more about the building of a lesbian urban community and the struggle to establish Women's Studies as a legitimate target of academic study. Despite this, McNaron has done us all a service by documenting a vital part of history in America.

[Maddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this from a used book stand at Pride in 2021. Overall it was a very honest look at her own life and all the struggles she went though being a closeted lesbian from the south and substance issues.

Had some minor issues with the whole teacher-student relationship but honestly I appreciate the honesty.

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the history in this memoir is interesting, I was unable to shake the early impression that her perception of social or professional disadvantages and slights exceeded the reality.