In this story by Catherine Lim, an English teacher frustrated by the lack of progress in one of his students misses vital clues that may indicate problems at home. He reads three compositions exhibiting poor grammar to a colleague. The first two, which describe her desire to become a nurse and help her family, express concerns about her father’s drinking and violent tendencies. In the third, which he misinterprets as being off topic, she describes her father as having become a cruel, violent “stranger” who continually beats her mother and herself. Themes include frustration, insensitivity, ambition, oppression, domestic violence, suicide. More…