A Dysfunctional Family Partly Seen

Abstract

A Dysfunctional Family Partly Seen Nancy Revelle Johnson (bio) On the Outskirts of Normal: Forging a Family against the Grain by Debra Monroe (Southern Methodist University Press, 2010. 248 pages. Illustrated. $22.50) Memoir writing clearly has gained in popularity in recent years. Attracting younger writers, the genre's confessional possibilities appeal to a generation drawn to blogging. These writers, as Jennifer Schuessler has suggested in the New York Times (July 6, 2009), focus on their own "harrowing experiences," experiences that seem endemic in modern times, with narratives characterized by struggles with personal demons, such as depression, alcoholism, and other addictions as well as family relationships. What these young writers lack in the perspective that comes with age, they compensate for in the immediacy they bring to their point of view on troubling trends, usually familial, in modern society. Debra Monroe, in writing this memoir, examines her own troubled past and her search for love and fulfillment through the adoption of a child. That the child she adopted was black and that she was living in a provincial Texas community at the time are complicating factors in her story. Monroe was the product of a dysfunctional family; and Spooner, Wisconsin, where she grew up, with its high murder and alcoholism rates, was not an idyllic small town. Her mother, whom Monroe credits, buffered her children as best she could from the abusive behavior of her alcoholic husband; but the life Monroe endured obviously left scars. Little information is divulged by Monroe on her formative years in high school and college. She describes herself as "sporadically smart but continually wild, smoking and drinking by the time she was fourteen." At some point, and it is not clear when, she chose to follow the advice of the high-school teacher who suggested she use her brain. As she began to succeed in school, school became a substitute for family. Academic success provided an escape from her difficult home. Monroe's journey was a long and trying one, one that involved cross-country moves and the essential story of crossing class lines. The first person in her family to go to college, she felt "too rough and tumble" to date classmates. Although she was on an upward trajectory, pursuing graduate work first in Kansas and then in Utah, her private life continued to be messy. She made bad choices in men, twice marrying aimless men. Her second husband repeated the patterns of abusive behavior of her mother's first two husbands. While the focus of Monroe's memoir is on transracial adoption and her life as a single mother, she also sheds light on problems associated with abusive family relationships. Her second husband, like herself, was the product of a dysfunctional family, and he repeated those patterns in their own marriage. Surprisingly her antennae did not pick up those signals before their marriage; and, when confronted with his abusive behavior after they were married, she remained in denial for a long time. Anger in a family was unavoidable, [End Page lix] she thought, because that was what she had known in her parents' marriage. It became clear in North Carolina, where they had moved for her first teaching job, that his behavior posed a threat to her career. They lived in a neighborhood where university administrators lived, and the arrival of police at their home was a problem. A move to Texas, to be near his family, did not, as she had hoped, improve the situation. Upon her arrival in Texas Monroe demonstrated her willingness to take chances. She moved into a fixer-upper in an isolated area twenty miles from her job, terminated her marriage, and adopted a baby. Two failed marriages behind her, she focused her search for love on adoption. She wanted stability in her life, but above all she wanted to be a mother. Her mother, who had taught her that God loved everyone, shaped her thinking on race. And her willingness to adopt a black baby expedited the adoption procedure. In a summer break from teaching, Monroe undertook the remodeling of her house and initiated the adoption procedure. For a single woman, alone and without support, it was...