ABSTRACT
We began on Monday in our usual way, doing sentence revisions, which the
entire class seems to enjoy. I remind my students that, as Mark Twain famously
observed, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is
the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. There’s always much
laughter when we revise certain sentences, especially when I challenge them to
improve on my own revisions of their writing. This laughter offsets the sorrow in
the darker essays, helping to maintain a positive “smile-to-tears” ratio. After-
wards, I handed out a copy of the following anonymous in-class writing assign-
ment, which I then summarized the following class:
Bearing Witness to Suffering
Many of you have written essays about painful and sometimes traumatic
experiences-losing a mother at an early age, enduring a brother’s suicide,
growing up without a father, experiencing the breakup of one’s family,
suffering from depression, losing a beloved grandparent or cousin, being
in the World Trade Center during 9/11, and witnessing domestic violence.
