I Dwell in Possibility - (Cross-Cultural Memoir) 2nd Edition by Toni McNaron (Paperback)

About the Book

"A thoughtful autobiography... grapples with the complexities of the pre-civil rights era and her own emerging sexuality." --Publishers Weekly

Book Synopsis

This brave and lyrical memoir is a powerful social document as well as an account of emotional, psychological, and intellectual self-actualization over four decades--from McNaron's childhood encounters with segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, through her first days of teaching and her fear of exposure as a lesbian and an alcoholic, to her recovery and coming out.

Review Quotes

"A thoughtful autobiography... grapples with the complexities of the pre-civil rights era and her own emerging sexuality." --Publishers Weekly

"Engrossing and sensitive... It moves along at the swift pace of a well-written novel." --Kirkus

"Lyrical and courageous." --Booklist

"This book will be invaluable to many audiences, both those struggling with their own coming to language and those moving from isolation to lesbian community. Its power and spirit capture with great precision the pleasures of victories, large and small, in the effort to become a complete self." --Carolyn Allen, author of Feminisms at a Millennium

"I Dwell in Possibility is an engrossingly good read in the tradition of Audre Lorde's Zami and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Toni McNaron's wonderful autobiography sensitively depicts the contradictory combination of racial privilege and sexual difference as they shape the dreams and longings of a white girl who did not fit the mold of southern belle." --Susan Stanford Friedman, author of Penelope's Web: Gender, Modernity, and H.D.'s Fiction