by Toni McNaron | Aug 22, 2016 | Toni's Blog
In 1984, Audre Lorde, black lesbian feminist writer, published an essay entitled “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Though was speaking about ways feminist women might find to begin to “dismantle” the...
by Toni McNaron | Jun 2, 2016 | Toni's Blog
He died, between breakfast and dinner on New Year’s Day, 1954. I was almost 17, a senior in high school, so we never had a conversation as two adults. In the 1980’s a favorite form of therapy for working with dead people was called Gestalt. In it, the...
by Toni McNaron | May 12, 2016 | Toni's Blog
In 1770 Oliver Goldsmith published “The Deserted Village,” a lamentation over the loss of an agrarian ethos in England. In April, 2016, I found myself back in Birmingham, AL, my birthplace. I’d made the trip to help my college roommate mark...
by Toni McNaron | Mar 30, 2016 | Toni's Blog
The recent publication and popularity of Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra has brought back memories of productions I’ve seen of this moving play about adult heterosexual love experienced in a Roman world unconducive to playfulness and passion. When I was in my...
by Toni McNaron | Mar 21, 2016 | Toni's Blog
Marilynne Robinson is producing serious fiction about major questions confronting us today. Now that her trilogy about a seemingly sleepy Iowa town is complete, we can begin to assess her contribution to 20th and early 21st century literature. When her first work,...
