The author recalls her struggles and adaptations—to school, to anti-Semitism, to her family’s history, to her feelings for other women, to her learning disability—before there were terms to make what she experienced a familiar part of our discourse. She suggests that,because the words that might have exempted her from effort or locked her into one category or another were never spoken, she found ways to do what was required and methods of coping that have served her well in life.

Concentrates specifically on the experience of using “Maus” (a narrative in comic strip form) with one class which met in spring 1996, after the accidental killing of a Black child by a Hasidic Jew in Crown Heights, New York. Uses the text at Medgar Evers College in a freshman composition course which also functions as an introduction to literature. Describes the classroom dynamics.