Graphic Details of Disturbing Student Writing Shouldn’t Have Been Published

To the Editor:

I am upset by Mary Gaitskill’s essay and its graphic report of the sexual violence, humiliation, and torture scenes in her students’ creative writing (“Trials of the Young,” The Chronicle Review, March 8). I’m not saying there should have been a trigger warning in The Chronicle. I’m saying that those passages should not have been repeated in The Chronicle at all. And Mary Gaitskill herself should not have permitted them to be submitted as assignments — much less read aloud to classes full of women — over and over again in her years of teaching creative writing. She should have said, “This is not acceptable in my class.” The Chronicle should have said, “This is not acceptable in our publication.”

Maria Alderson
Instructor, English Department
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, Ill.