Jennifer Sinor, author of Openings in Brevity 24, offers her thoughts on “disturbing student writing”:
Recently, in my graduate nonfiction class, a student turned in some writing that was, at least initially, fairly disturbing. It contained passages of intense violence (specifically imagined school shootings), expressions of real loneliness, and thoughts of suicide. All in the first person. Yet, it was beautiful, brilliant even, complicated, and smart, oh so very smart. How thin the line grows between art and madness.
In the age of splatter punk and Virginia Tech, it is difficult to know how to react to writing that disturbs. What if I am the one who lets it go? What if this student hurts himself or others? What if his work traumatizes students in the workshop? Or…and this is where my thoughts headed each night that I lay awake wondering just how to respond….what if I am the one who censors my students? What happens in my classroom if some topics are off limits; some honesty just too honest?
Nonfiction writers are especially vulnerable. We ask our students to do the hard work of excavating the truth. The “I” casts no shadow behind which to hide. My surprise should not have been that I received such difficult writing, but that I had escaped for so long.
In the end, we saw no reason for concern. A relief. Turning the student over to the counseling center would have felt in some ways like a betrayal. But I have become aware of my university’s official channels and am working with my department to develop a “first response” committee whose role it is to read potentially disturbing writing. I have also been given a useful set of questions developed by the creative writing faculty at Virginia Tech. I wish I had found this document (PDF Here) earlier. It would have saved me many a sleepless night.
