[In the following essay, Ratcliffe considers Erdrich's portrayal of addiction in Love Medicine and discusses some of the difficulties she had teaching the novel—a problem she refers to as “classroom denial.”]

In pedagogy scholarship, the term “resistance” functions as an antanaclasis; that is, the term has two very different definitions that emerge from competing theories. In post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory, “resistance” describes “a subject's refusal to admit the hidden meaning of his symptom” (Grigg, 102). This usage has entered pedagogical lore, referring to students' refusals to critique their own commonplace assumptions about race, gender, class, and other cultural categories (Aronowitz and Giroux; Chappell; Freire; hooks; Luke). In neo-Marxist theory however, “resistance” describes “a personal ‘space,’ … [of] subjective agency” from which students may “subvert the process of socialization” by contesting our cultural commonplaces (Giroux, Teachers, 162). This critical pedagogy usage most often refers to teachers' helping students identify and then employ their own agencies in order to interrupt their cultural socialization (Bauer and Jarratt; Bizzell; Giroux; Graff; hooks; Lewis). Despite the differences between these two uses of “resistance,” they both posit teachers as those-who-know and students as those-who-do-not-know.

But what happens when teachers occupy the position of those-who-do-not-know? More specifically, what happens when teachers refuse to critique the (un)conscious strategies, assumptions, and effects of their own pedagogies? Such post-Freudian teacher resistance may merge with post-Freudian student resistance to construct what I am calling classroom denial. Classroom denial occurs in those moments when teachers and students (un)knowingly refuse to address a topic, shutting down all possible conversations about it; as such, classroom denial exposes that students and teachers are more fearful that their beliefs may be transformed than hopeful that these beliefs may be affirmed. If such post-Freudian resistance is to be challenged, the classroom must become a space for neo-Marxist resistance.

The antanaclatic uses of student resistance are much debated in pedagogy scholarship. But the particular synergy of student/teacher resistance, which I am calling classroom denial, is rarely discussed. The reasons are obvious. As teachers we can detect our students' post-Freudian resistance, theorize about it, and attempt to interrupt it with neo-Marxist resistance. We have a harder time, however, recognizing how our own post-Freudian resistance merges with students' to construct classroom denial. But one place where classroom denial may be seen and heard is in our classroom discourses, that is, in the ways we talk to and with our students and in the ways we encourage them to talk to and with us and each other. Such classroom discourses may be read as rhetorical maps of classroom denial. By reading these discourses, we may conceptualize, critique, and negotiate our rhetorics of classroom denial in order to re-vise them.

To demonstrate how rhetorics of classroom denial may be conceptualized, critiqued, and negotiated, I will examine the following three teaching moments that have haunted me, three moments that occurred in an introductory women's literature course when my students and I were studying Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine:

Moment #1: Kathy Whitson, who wrote a fine dissertation on Erdrich, came to my Women's Literature class to talk with students about Erdrich and Love Medicine. During this discussion, she asked students who they considered the main character of the novel to be, if indeed such a character existed. A student, “Bev,” hesitantly replied, “June?” Another student, “Susan,” confidently countered, “But she was only in the first chapter.”

Moment #2: At the next class meeting, “Kim” named an alcohol question in the novel. She established her authority to speak on such matters by first claiming that her grandfather was full-blooded Cherokee and then conspiratorially confiding, “They drink a lot, you know.”

Moment #3: “Jane” came to my office for a paper conference and confided that: one, she viewed June's family as an addictive, dysfunctional family much like her own and, two, she thought this interpretive schema explained behaviors and dialogues of Erdrich's characters—behaviors and dialogues that seen from another schema might seem confusing or, worse yet, just poorly written. But she questioned whether this topic was appropriate for the essay assignment.

These three moments haunted me because I did not handle them particularly well. I did not explore the presence of June, the absent alcoholic mother in the novel, because other discussion topics had been planned for the day. I shut down Kim's claim about Native Americans and alcoholism by shifting into my best teacher voice and suggesting that perhaps we should not make such sweeping generalizations about any group of people. And I inadvertently reinforced Jane's suspicion that addiction was not an appropriate topic by saying something like, “That sounds interesting,” and then immediately asking for other possible topics. These three moments haunted me until I named them; they are, in fact, moments of classroom denial. They are moments when the alcohol questions in the novel could have been explored but were not.

In this chapter I want to reopen these alcohol questions in Love Medicine and, in the process, consider the possibilities of resisting resistance, that is, resisting classroom denial. To do so, I will make two moves. First, I will articulate the rhetoric of classroom denial that emerges in my students' comments and in my responses, exposing how this rhetoric is structured. Because particular rhetorics of classroom denial may emerge differently, my goal is to model a reflective pedagogical praxis that other teachers can adapt for their particular situations. Second, beginning from the context of my students' alcohol questions, I will explore not only how we might have read Love Medicine differently in terms of addiction, but also what these differences might mean pedagogically.

Rhetorics of classroom denial are manifested in discursive structures that possess their own strategies, assumptions, and effects. Such rhetorics are neither static, a/historical, developmental, unified, or universal; nor do they assure that every moment of classroom denial will emerge identically. Instead, the components of these rhetorics are constantly in flux, emerging in many different forms, in many different combinations, in many different situations—all of which depend upon the teacher, the students, the institution, the historical moment, and the cultural conditions in which they all intersect. The importance of these rhetorics is that they may be critiqued to expose functions of classroom denial and then revised to confront this denial. But recognizing moments of classroom denial is not an easy task; such recognitions usually occur after the fact—as teachers walk back to their offices, fight traffic on the freeway, reflect on their courses a year later. The problem with such delayed recognitions is that, once the moments have passed, so too have the pedagogical opportunities. Although the teacher can sometimes reconstruct these moments the next day or the next week in class, the passage of time usually dulls the interest in as well as the urgency of such discussions; in the case of a year's passage, the moments are lost forever.

If teachers could only recognize such moments as they occur, classroom denial could be transformed into classroom possibility. For such recognitions to occur, teachers must be alert to the existence of classroom denial and also be willing and able to note its rhetorical structure. In this section, I will model how to conceptualize the rhetorical structure of classroom denial. Grounding my claims in the three classroom moments described earlier, I will articulate the strategies, assumptions, and effects of this rhetoric in hopes that, once identified, this rhetoric may be used as a model by other teachers who want to identify and revise their own rhetorics of classroom denial.

The strategies employed in a class's rhetoric of classroom denial may be read through the trope of (not) speaking. For example, a popular strategy is silence or the absence of speaking about a topic either in class, in conferences, or in writing. Silence allows students and teachers to avoid focusing on subjects such as June's alcoholism in Love Medicine; it also allows them to avoid responding to such topics when they are voiced by someone else. The reasons for silence are varied. Both students and teachers may be silent because they want to remain in the same place and do not want uncomfortable topics to lead to other areas of discussion, which is probably the reason I did not follow up on the alcohol questions posed by my students. People may be silent because they are formulating responses, which are not yet conceptualized fully enough for public consumption. Or they may use silence as a form of (un)conscious “lying,” for example, students' letting the teacher believe they agree or vice versa in order to avoid real or imagined consequences, which is probably the reason my students did not challenge my silencing their questions. Whatever its cause, silence serves as a powerful socializing tool. It pressures those who want to bring up uncomfortable topics not to do so, and it also pressures those who do bring up these subjects never to do so again. Within a rhetoric of classroom denial, silence can speak loudly.

A second strategy of classroom denial is changing the subject. If, for whatever reason, silence has become impossible, an uncomfortable subject may be introduced into classroom discussions, conferences, student papers, and/or teacher responses. Although Bev, Kim, and Jane introduced alcohol questions, I sidestepped the issue by changing the subject, and because of the power differentials of the classroom the students did not challenge my move. The motivations for this strategy are similar to those for silence. Changing the subject allows us to avoid addressing our discomfort. The difference, however, lies in the effects. Once a topic has been voiced, its presence hangs heavily in the air; that is, the entire class consciously recognizes that the topic is taboo whether or not it is aware of the reason why.

A third strategy, using tone of voice to imply a form/content split, is employed when people want to emphasize attitudes more than claims. Bev, Kim, and Jane all employed tentative or hushed tones when introducing alcohol questions. In such situations, students often employ a conspiratorial tone as if to say, “I'm not sure we should talk about this.” This tone seems to ask someone else for either the permission to speak or a reason not to speak. It implies that the students know that classroom boundaries are being transgressed and that they also know the listeners know. Students hope that the tone of their delivery, which implies a form/content split, will enable listeners to forgive the transgression of their words. Ironically, their tone also reveals that they do not really believe this forgiveness will be forthcoming. Likewise, my invoking a teacherly voice in response to Kim's claim and Jane's essay topic begs a form/content split. My words acknowledge their questions; my tone forces closure on these same questions. In all these cases, tones contradict claims. Teachers must be aware that a form/content split is not possible; such awareness will help confront the doubled “truths” of discourses.

A fourth strategy of classroom denial is the introduction of uncomfortable topics by students and teachers not to critique them but to reaffirm their opinions about them. The appeals used in such discussions reaffirm not only the “truth” of the uncomfortable topics but also the logics that deem the topics uncomfortable. Two such appeals occurred in my class: an appeal to common sense and an appeal to unambiguous boundaries. Although appeals to common sense often make communication easier, they can also perpetuate unthinking stereotypes. For example, Kim's use of “you know” implies that everyone else will agree with her claim that Native Americans “drink a lot.” This use further implies that the subject is not even open for discussion. Although appeals to clear boundaries can challenge dysfunction, they are often unknowingly invoked in the classroom to promote a compartmentalized view of the world. For example, Kim's claim that Native Americans “drink a lot” implies that the problem lies with them, not me. Thus, the they are branded as failures, and the me is relieved of any responsibility for this failing. In the process of reaffirming these claims, both appeals reinforce a “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap” logic. Each individual becomes solely responsible for his or her actions. The structural forces that might encourage drinking in Native Americans or stereotyping in Anglo-Americans are rendered invisible. So too is the intersubjectivity of people, which might redefine the problems of drinking and stereotyping as individual and cultural issues.

Undergirding all these strategies of classroom denial are certain assumptions. First, students often strongly defend their belief in the right answer. Truth is assumed to be a static, discoverable entity instead of a fluid, constructed process. This is exemplified in Susan's confident refutation of Bev's claim that June might be the main character of the novel. Second, and closely related to the first assumption, is that students frequently assume a common logic exists. The possibility of multiple logics are perceived not only as illogical—for example, Susan's inability to imagine a character who dies on page six as the main character—but also as dangerous—Jane's asking my permission to employ a different logic with which to interpret Love Medicine.

Third, students narrowly define the presence and absence of identification. If an experience is present in their lives, then it can be present in anyone's life. Conversely, if an experience is absent in theirs, it need not be a problem for others. If an experience is a problem, such as alcoholism within Native American communities, then some cultural, psychological, and/or biological inferiority in others must be at fault. Fourth, students oftentimes assume that identity is essentially located in DNA, not in a person's ever-changing life experiences. Kim's they/me logic exemplifies this belief: they cannot change, and me is not subject to their problem. Fifth, students invoke appropriateness as the primary criterion of classroom etiquette. This major metaphor of classical rhetoric is exemplified when Jane asks if alcoholism is an appropriate paper topic. What is said, how it is said, to whom it is said—students know that there are definite rules for these procedures. Yet these rules are hardly ever articulated by the teacher. Students must become proficient at reading each teacher's “etiquette handbook” which is written in a teacher's verbal responses, facial expressions, syllabi, assignment sheets, and so on.

Finally, perhaps the most powerful assumption undergirding classroom denial is fear, and fear takes many forms: fear of being wrong, fear of offending, fear of exposing oneself, fear of upsetting one's beliefs, fear of losing control. Fear may explain my students' silences, changing of subjects, hushed tones, and so on. On a more personal note, fear explains my avoidance of alcohol questions in the classroom: for example, fear of what topics and behaviors will surface in the class, fear of how students will be affected both inside and outside the classroom, fear of how students will react to one another and to me, fear of how I will or will not react, fear of possible administrative repercussions, and fear of losing control of the class. A decade or more of teaching has taught me that when alcohol questions are introduced, students' outside lives quickly become visible inside the classroom. A few years ago I would have defended my avoidance as a refusal to play psychologist to my students' patient, a practice that too often degenerates into a teacher's constructing students as “sick” so that the teacher can play doctor and use the class experience to heal them all. I still consider this practice dangerous and my former stance valid, given that teachers are not trained psychologists and that they have no right to make psychological assumptions about particular students while planning a syllabus a semester before ever meeting these students. Today, however, I realize that my avoidance of alcohol questions is more complex than this ethical stance. For, in actuality, teachers have been playing psychologist for as long as teaching has existed as a profession: they anticipate student anxiety about talking in class, write student-centered assignments or constructive comments on students' papers, chat with students during conferences and after class about issues that effect the students' private lives, and in feminist classrooms pride themselves on foregrounding issues from private life as a valid response to the assigned texts. Consequently, teachers must be prepared to provide support options for students when troubles in their private lives become visible.

The effects of classroom denial are tremendously important. When classroom denial is not challenged, no productive discourse emerges; hence, no minds are changed, and no actions are taken. Each participant in classroom denial places the burden for changing attitudes and actions upon others. In my class, Kim puts the burden on Native Americans to change their patterns of alcoholism, and I put the burden on Jane to come up with a more acceptable paper topic. While putting the burden on others to do their own cultural work is not necessarily bad, giving oneself permission to stand outside this work as the-one-who-already-knows may be a counterproductive move. Such a privileged stance may be a way of ignoring what one does not know. When this occurs, old patterns of thought and behavior continue, and education becomes a means of mindlessly reinforcing the status quo rather than a means of critically reinforcing or revising it.

With the aforementioned rhetorical components of classroom denial identified, I am compelled to confront the following questions that teachers all need to ask themselves on occasion:

1. What do I consider “proper” topics for classroom discussions, and why am I thinking in terms of “proper”?

2. What are the possibilities of a literary text in a literature classroom?

3. Why do I sometimes dismiss students who seemingly spout clichés—like Kim's claim that “They drink a lot, you know”—when such “clichés” can actually open up spaces for productive discussions about cultural stereotypes, such as Native Americans and addiction?

4. What do I really mean when I tell students that they should assert their right to speak in class?

5. Why is “control” a dominant pedagogical metaphor for me?

6. Why have I so narrowly construed the psychology metaphor?

7. What are my criteria for deciding when to confront students and when to let their comments slide?

My response to this last question evokes two other questions: How could I have approached Erdrich's text differently if I had refused to let students' comments about addiction slide? And what might these differences mean pedagogically?

What if I had used the three classroom moments that haunt me as prompts for discussing Erdrich's novel? That is, what if my class and I had followed Bev's lead and read the text with June, an alcoholic, as the main character? What if we had not dismissed Kim's claim and instead explored the alcohol question in June's family as well as in the Chippewa community? And what if we had encouraged Jane to use alcoholism as a dominant metaphor for writing about the text? Such moves obviously will not provide a unified vision of the text nor the one right reading, but they just may provide possibilities for using Love Medicine to explore alcohol questions in composition and literature classrooms.

First, could a case be made for June Kashpaw's being the main character of the novel, even though she dies on page six? The answer is yes. June is the first character the narrator introduces; readers encounter her in the first sentence “walking down the clogged main street of oil boomtown Williston, North Dakota, killing time before the noon bus arrived that would take her home” (1). Subsequently, she can be seen as a thread that weaves the families in the novel together, linking the Lazarres, the Kashpaws, the Lamartines, and their interwoven blood lines through her birth and adoption, her marriage and affairs, and her legitimate and illegitimate sons, King and Lipsha. June's niece Albertine Johnson provides perhaps the most balanced vision of June: not only was she someone who was pretty, who gave gum as presents, and who talked to children as if they were adults, but she was also someone who was frequently drunk, who lost jobs as a result, and who left her sons to be raised by other family members (8). Yet by the end of the novel June has created a space for Lipsha to have the last words as he drives the car his legitimate brother purchased with June's life insurance money: “So there was nothing to do but cross the water, and bring her home” (272, emphasis mine). As the frame of the novel and as an influence in the lives of most other characters in the novel, June could easily be read as the main character of Love Medicine.

Simply making this case is not enough; teachers should use it as a premise to ask other questions about the implications of June's status as a main character. What narrative events do June and her alcoholism set in motion? What is the affect of her drinking on her own character? What do readers find out about other characters in the novel when they read the work in light of June as an absent alcoholic mother, daughter, niece, wife, lover? Such questions allow the discussion of narrative concerns such as narrator, plot, and character as well as cultural concerns such as death and addiction. These questions also ask us to interweave the material dimensions of narrative and cultural concerns, that is, to view alcoholism as a literary trope and as a physical addiction of the body.

Also, could a case be made that an alcohol problem exists within June's family and within the novel's Chippewa community? Here the answer is most definitely yes. June's family history of alcoholism emerges in the scene where her maternal grandparents and her father turn her over to Marie Kashpaw to rear. June's maternal grandparents, who at this point the reader also believes to be Marie's parents, are drunk; June's father, “the whining no-good” Morrissey, is drunk; and June herself is drunk, even though she is only nine years old (63-64). June's adoptive family, the Kashpaws, also have their own troubles with alcoholism: Nestor drinks to escape his reality until his wife Made demands he stop and he chooses to put his “nose against the wheel” (93); their son Gordie, who eventually marries June, begins drinking after June dies, for “then the need was upon him” (172); June and Gordie's son King physically abuses his wife Lynette and his cousin Albertine in a drunken frenzy (38); and June's other son Lipsha drinks too much after finding out that June is his mother but stops after meeting his father, Gerry Lamartine, who has “been on the wagon for thirteen years” (155). And Gerry's family, the Lamartines, obviously have their share of alcohol-related troubles: Henry Lamartine Sr., who is not the biological father of any of the sons who bear his name, gets drunk in a bar and then sits on a railroad track waiting for a train to hit him (75); Henry Lamartine Jr., picks up a young Albertine after returning from Vietnam and proceeds to get drunk to escape his Vietnam flashbacks (134-41); later he gets drunk with his brother Lyman and drowns himself in a fast-flowing river (154).

I could continue citing examples, but the point is obvious. The alcoholism in the characters' families and communities—whether genetically or culturally induced—influences all aspects of the novel. Yet once this alcoholism question is established, questions emerge. For example, how could information about addictive personalities and dysfunctional families enrich our reading of the characters, their families, and their communities? What particular cultural forces in the Chippewa community promote and/or condemn drinking? And how can the teacher address the alcohol question so as to complicate students' understanding of alcoholism in Chippewa and other Native American nations, and not just reinforce their opinions that “They drink a lot, you know”? Such questions invite addiction research into the classroom; they also invite questions about the tension between universal and culturally specific claims; and they invite students's responses and stereotypical assumptions to be material for class discussion.

Further, could alcoholism be used as a dominant metaphor with which to construct a reading of Love Medicine? Again the answer is yes. One reading would juxtapose alcoholism with the breaking apart phenomenon that haunts Erdrich's novel. Lipsha defines this phenomenon, in terms of his grandpa Nestor, as a person's mind becoming so full that it explodes. And Lipsha cites the result of this phenomenon: “I always used to say that's why Indians drink” (190). Thus, Lipsha implies that this breaking apart is both an individual and a cultural phenomenon: individual characters are in the process of being shattered because so too is the Chippewa nation to which they belong.

In the first six pages, June breaks apart twice. In the bar restroom, after she has picked up the mud engineer Andy, she seems “to drift out of her clothes and skin with no help from anyone” and feels “that underneath it all her body was pure and naked—only the skins were stiff and old” (4). Yet, she pulls herself together and goes back into the bar. Later after having sex in Andy's truck, her “skin felt smooth and strange. And then she knew that if she lay there any longer she would crack wide open, not in one place but in many pieces” (5). And once broken apart and either not willing or not able to pull herself back together, she walks into a snowy death on the North Dakota plains. Later Albertine describes June as someone who “broke, little by little, into someone whose shoulders sagged when she thought no one was looking” (8). But it is Marie Kashpaw who identifies the source of June's breaking apart. After she saves a young June from being hanged by the other children at June's instigation, she notes:

I turned her head toward me and looked into her sorrowful black eyes. I looked a long time, as if I was falling down a hill. She blinked gravely and returned my stare. There was a sadness I couldn't touch there. It was a hurt place; it was deep; it was with her all the time like a broke rib that stabbed when she breathed.

(68)

But June is not the only character who possesses “a hurt place,” who threatens to break apart, and who uses alcohol to ward off pain and sadness. June's abusive ex-husband Gordie does the same. When he is so drunk that he believes a deer he has just killed is June, the narrator describes him as “cracking, giving way” (181). June and Gordie's son King also experiences this phenomenon. Although readers never get inside his head as with some of the other characters, readers do see the breaking apart in his actions: in his drunken rage against his wife Lynette and his cousin Albertine, he accidentally breaks apart his aunts' pies. Albertine's lament for the loss of the pies could be read as a lament for any of the above characters and their relationships: “once they smash, there is no way to put them right” (39).

This breaking apart seems to be an experience that all the characters in the novel fear but they deal with it in different ways. As the “child” of alcoholics, Marie keeps herself together by controlling her husband Nestor. As a child pulled between Chippewa and white cultures, Nestor keeps himself together and overcomes his urge to drink by the force of Marie's will and by his own recognition that he cannot meet his responsibilities if he keeps drinking. But June and Gordie and King do not or will not or cannot keep themselves together, so they drink and continue to drink—all in an attempt to keep the breaking apart at bay. In the end, the alcohol fails them. June dies; Gordie hits bottom when he thinks he has killed June; and King loses his connection with the Chippewa community and gambles away the car purchased with his mother's insurance money.

This reading not only foregrounds alcohol addiction and fragmentation on personal and cultural levels, but it also invokes certain questions. What different “hurt places” haunt characters in the novel? How does alcohol affect their body/spirit connections? How, if at all, can other characters intervene in the alcoholic characters' lives? What effect does a character's alcoholism have on other characters, on the families, on the community? And perhaps most importantly, how does my reading reflect an Anglo bias and erase Chippewa concerns; for example, how does interpreting Gordie's scene with the deer as a drunken hallucination affect the fact that in Chippewa theology June's spirit might have indeed entered the deer? As with the previous sets of questions, these questions merge narrative and cultural concerns. That is, they acknowledge addiction as a valid means of interrogating the text, and they invite student's knowledge of or experience with addiction, particularly alcohol addiction, into classroom discussions.

What does such a reading offer? In general, it offers a chance to discuss addiction. In particular in my class where such questions came up, it would have offered a validation of student's concern and of student's interpretations. It would have modeled an educational pedagogy that I believe in: start where students are and move them to more complex grounds; at the same time, don't underestimate the complexity of the students' starting points. So what possibilities does such a reading offer for the discussion of addiction? Like the card game, the alcoholism in the novel appears to be a game of chance. But like Lipsha's marking the cards to win the car purchased with his mother's insurance money, the characters are marked with patterns of dysfunctional behaviors that can be understood via a discussion of addiction.

Love Medicine concludes with Lipsha coming to terms with his mother June Kashpaw, his father Gerry Lamartine, his Chippewa heritage, and himself—a model strategy for coming to terms with discussions of addiction in the classroom. Yet Lipsha is purposely ambiguous about his father, not revealing to readers whether or not Gerry is actually guilty of murder: “Let's just say he [Gerry] answered: ‘That's the penetrating mystery of it. Nobody knows’” (269). Lipsha's response functions pretty well as a metaphor for reading and writing about literature; coming to terms with an interpretation does not mean erasing ambiguity. His response also functions pretty well as a metaphor for conducting literature and writing classes that foreground addiction; nobody knows what will happen in the course of class discussions or writing assignments.

But one way this uncertainty can be constructively employed is to follow the pedagogical model implied in this paper: (1) provide students with forums in which to ask their own questions about the text; (2) be ready to recognize questions that could drive class discussions about addiction; (3) have students turn their questions into claims and prove or disprove them; (4) together generate other questions triggered by the claims and proofs; (5) explore these new questions without having prefabricated answers prepared or expected; and (6) let students bring their experiences, their research, and their critical reading, writing, and thinking skills to bear in answering these questions. Whether teachers follow this or some other pedagogical model for discussing addiction, two things can be assumed: one, discussing addiction as a literary trope will inevitably lead to confessions of addictions in oneself, one's relatives and/or one's acquaintances; two, layers of meaning will be constructed in discussion, in writing, and in silence.

Teachers need not let this construction of meaning fall to chance. Classes may unfold like the card game at the end of Love Medicine, when Lipsha marks the cards so that he can win the car purchased with his mother's life insurance money. Teachers can, and should, come to class with a marked deck of pedagogical strategies, not to cheat students but to put boundaries on the game of chance. An important element of this pedagogical marked deck includes establishing clear boundaries for what can and cannot be discussed in class, in journals, and in papers. An equally important element is recognizing that these boundaries will inevitably blur. When students' oral or written responses do blur these boundaries, use the blurrings as springboards for discussion, and when these blurrings indicate problems in students' lives, be ready to deal with the consequences. As Jane Lilienfeld reminds us, teachers need to have a repertoire of support systems available for students, for example, names, addresses, and numbers of organizations that students may contact. For while I still contend that teachers should not play therapist, I also contend that we cannot let the metaphor of June, the absent alcoholic mother, become the major trope of pedagogy. To do so is to deny the realities of students' lives, the realities that they will write into their reading and writing assignments whether teachers ask them to or not.

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