Before beginning my analysis, I want to show the similarities between first-year composition students you have encountered, particularly in the first week of class, and the English-speaking women^{Endnote 1} with whom I was privileged to work at the Center for Nonviolence. I want them to be seen not as broken shells whose spirits have been beaten out of them—even if for a few, that is the apparent truth as they sit waiting for the group to begin. Instead, I want them to be seen as women determined to change the circumstances of their lives. Sitting in a circle in an off-white room and on a motley assortment of folding chairs, they are anxious women, some of them, grey-skinned with sunken eyes ringed with black eyeliner, heavy mascara, and unruly hair. They are hostile or withdrawn women, some of them, honey-brown calloused hands gripping their generous upper arms, eyes darkly unfocused. The women wear jean jackets or large t-shirts over jeans or stretch pants. They smell of cigarette smoke and perhaps sweat, perhaps perfume; they tap their feet or slump over with elbows on their knees. As they wait for the other women to sign in, they don’t really look one another in the eye; they look at the white walls, at their manicured fingernails, at the floor, at the semi-open door—they may even regard each other as people in a doctor’s office look at other patients—only until the look is returned. Whereas students in the first week of class all appear to want to know how they will get through the class or semester, the fifteen women gathered in the Center support group meeting room all want to know the same thing I wanted to know fifteen years ago: How do I get myself out of the mess I’m in? How did I get here in the first place?