In this essay, ESL students in their first year of college discuss their feelings about the use of literature in composition courses and offer qualified support for its inclusion. In particular, the lit-comp issue is especially complex where ESL students are involved, as literary texts in English can prove daunting to read and write about for students who have not yet achieved an advanced English language proficiency. This paper discusses the results of a study that examined ESL students' attitudes toward literature, with a particular interest in two questions: (1) How do ESL students feel about reading and writing about literature in English; and (2) Do ESL students believe literature belongs in an English-composition course? The results of this study suggest that ESL students see a role for literature, but not as the dominant source of reading material. These results can be read as a call for a careful mixture of nonliterary and literary texts.