What do David Foster Wallace's essay on wars over usage and Pico Iyer's comma personification have to do with improving students' academic writing? Everything. For all of the attention supposedly paid to Bloom's Taxonomy-with creativity at the top-educators tend to shy away from encouraging students' creative choices in areas where traditional analysis and the critic's style and tone have reigned. While we do not want our students to write inane or empty verbiage, we unintentionally set them up for this inevitability--or worse. The movement away from children's natural creative impulses in elementary school to a direction in which they literally fit their writing into preconfigured shapes is a gradual one. Although purportedly taught to instill academic structures, these boxes are also designed to facilitate the ease with which student product may be assessed. We need a more creative approach to teaching writing. A methodology incorporating creativity, as modeled by students in this text, demonstrates the kind of progress we are all seeking, offering an exciting challenge for young writers and educators alike.

This writing spiritually, passionately, and intellectually addresses the issues surrounding the silence of both church and secular community concerning violence against women. The author shares a model of ministry that engaged women who courageously describe their victimization, bringing the reader into the heart of their woundedness. This ministry model has proven effective in breaking the silence of abuse while providing a safe, nurturing environment in which victims of abuse may begin the lengthy process of healing. This book is a must-read for women and men alike, as we are all somehow associated with a female victim-survivor of violence and abuse.

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