Based on experiences teaching a middle grades literacy course for pre-service teachers, this "Voices from the Field" article examines how challenging texts provoke adult learners to more closely attend to their reading experiences. By engaging with difficult texts, pre-service teachers experience frustration and confusion while reading. "Frustrational" texts (Ness & Kenny, 2016) are used as a means to remind teachers how young, developing readers often feel when confronted with unfamiliar text. This article describes a teaching and learning think-aloud process with two carefully selected frustrational texts. The overarching goal of my think-aloud instruction is to make visible the invisible metacognitive conversation which occurs during active reading. I also highlight how teacher modeling and student-centered discussions can support pre-service teachers' reflection on their own ethnocentrism and biases and encourage the development of culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2014). These classroom activities, and the challenging texts around which they are focused, seek to provide opportunities for teachers in training to re-see their own reading strengths and needs so that they are better equipped to use think-alouds in comprehension instruction and more empathetic as teachers of children.