Toni McNaron has been talking about and writing books and stories for many decades. As a child, she often chose to read a good book rather than going to the local ice cream shop with neighborhood friends. After trying to be a physics and math major in college, she admitted that it was her literature class and teacher who really inspired and satisfied her intellectual curiosity. As a college professor for thirty-seven years, Toni worked with young people to help them feel the power of beautiful language and the centrality of reading about people whose actions and cultures stretched students’ perspectives and awakened empathy even for characters who overt actions might offend or frighten them.
Her own writing has ranged widely: editing a pioneering collection of stories by women who survived incest; two memoirs of growing up in an unreconstructed South and, more recently, of wrestling with God until she has forged a comfortable faith for herself as a lesbian-feminist; editing essays about famous sister pairs in literature; editing and writing articles about Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, writing in code, pedagogical concerns, and attraction based on sameness rather than opposition.
Since 2001, Toni has been able to refashion how she wants to spend her time, finding in retirement creative ways to “teach” good books to curious adults even as she has turned her considerable yard into a series of wonderful gardens that sustain her, lots of local birds, and the occasional welcomed bunny rabbit. In these times so full of race-based inequities, Toni has decided to use her considerable teaching skills to introduce mostly white and older readers to books by and about black life now and into the inglorious past. This is her way to resist as she enters more seriously into consideration of mortality.
Academic Colonialism
In 1964, when I began teaching English literature at the University of Minnesota, I lectured. That was how I'd been taught when in college, so I just started doing the same thing myself. I worked hard to make my lectures sprightly and engaging; students took notes...
Being Human
In 1860, the Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, wrote a long poem entitled "Tithonus." The title character is in love with Eos, goddess of the dawn, so he asks her to grant him immortality so they may stay together. She does that but forgets to include that he...
“Stage Beauty”
I recently watched the 2003 movie "Stage Beauty" for the third time. It is about theater in mid-to-late seventeenth century England when women were not allowed to act on stage. Female parts were played by young male performers called "boy actors." One of the most...