ABSTRACT
ON TUESDAY, January 29,1991, at 6:45 A.M. I read the Sentinel headline and front-page story: Saddam Hussein threatens to attach nuclear warheads to his Scuds. In dawn’s vulnerable moment, having read the news before establishing my usual media-guard censors, I am ravaged by this information and unable to focus appropriately on my role as composition and rhetoric instructor, on my agenda of thesis statements and this week’s readings by Jewelle Gomez, Paula Gunn Allen, and Adrienne Rich. I enter the classroom at 8 A.M. feeling a sense of responsibility to my role in this community-or perhaps desiring a community that does not exist. I invite a discussion of the impact of the war and ask specifically how we are sustaining ourselves, where we are getting support. One after another the students tell me they have not read a paper or watched television in days or a week; they have chosen to “block it out,” they say. In response to an inclass writing prompt, one student writes: “Since I’m not keeping up with the news, it’s kinda nice to come in and know I’m not the only one ignoring the news because it bothers them too much…. When the war is over (hopefully very soon) I’m not sure it would have touched my life at all (except emotionally). I’m gonna forget about the war once it’s over.”
