ABSTRACT
It took us five full classes, two and one-half weeks, to read aloud the Assignment 2
essays. They were moving in many ways: as a reflection of the students’ major
loves and losses; as a record of their anticipated fears, as we saw in Nicholette’s
essay about Isabella’s dread of her father’s worsening health; and as a snapshot
of contemporary American society, where so many grown children continue to
grieve over their parents’ failed marriages. Some of these students, like Nicholette,
grow up without knowing their fathers, and they experience what James Herzog
(2001) calls “father hunger,” the yearning for a father who is either physically
or emotionally absent from his children’s lives as a result of divorce.
