Because Dominique (or D-Mon, as he liked to be called) had drill before class, he would sometimes come in late in the author's class, his army boots silently moving across the tile as though he were trying to sneak by a sentry. The army fatigues that he wore were supposed to help him blend into a desert landscape, a tan-and-brown world of sand. In…

This article considers the emotional and psychological complexities of responding to personal narratives when the focus is war. The author teaches at a community college and she always begins her semester with a narrative assignment for the usual reasons: students write better when they write what they know; teachers should scaffold writing…