This essay explores how photographic images of atrocity work to undo some of our assumptions about how historical narratives work, and disturb the cultural memory that allows us to write ourselves into history. It suggests a way of reading these photographic images that yields something that might be called “forgetful memory,” aspects of the event at the center of the photo that cannot be integrated into the narrative we build to contain it.

Reviewed are: Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers, by Lee Ann Carroll, and Misunderstanding the Assignment: Teenage Students, College Writing, and the Pains of Growth, by Doug Hunt.