Is there something shared in the stories of a free man recounting his experience as a slave in the American South, of a Nigerian village chief confronted with the culture clash presented by colonialism, a widow living in an ashram on the edge of society in pre-independence India, and a leader of the Crow nation confronted with cultural devastation while his tribe is confined to a reservation in the western United States? Is there anything to be learned from listening to a voice so different from ours? And if so, what are the conditions for creating a space for discussion around what these voices have to say about their experiences of suffering? In Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering, Elizabeth Spelman writes that we can find examples of suffering in everyone's lives, whether it's our own, those of our loved ones, or those we've never met. (5). But how does our response to each differ? Who are we responsible for taking care of us? Natural and human forces constantly threaten our world, creating a sense of vulnerability. Jonathan Lear explains, in Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, that not only we as human creatures, but also our way of life as cultural animals, are vulnerable (7). If this feeling of vulnerability in the face of suffering has such an influence on our lives, how can we, as educators, prepare our students to live with it? Spelman offers several ways of thinking about suffering as a human condition, one of which I will explore in this article: "Suffering is the human condition in the sense that an important sign of recognizing the full humanity of others and taking to the seriousness of their suffering is the willingness to consider their point of view on what suffers... middle of paper... or to weigh you down and kill you” (Achebe 134). Uchendu recites a song that affirms his view of suffering as a shared experience, which should produce a feeling of solidarity: “For whom is it good, for whom is it good? There is no one for whom everything is going well. (Achebe 135). In the film Water, Shakuntala, commonly known as Didi, is one of a group of widows living in an ashram in pre-independence India. The film shows the suffering endured by Didi and the other widows. Didi's world changes as Ghandi challenges society's beliefs, including those regarding the proper place of widows. We witness Didi's progression from a life based on blind faith, as she ignores the prostitution demanded of her fellow widow Kalyani, to a life in which she begins to exercise her status as a moral agent, in choosing to save the young widow Chuyia from the same fate.