The literary works surveyed here were written by authors who, as children, witnessed apartheid, holocaust, imprisonment, escape, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other horrors that marked their lives. In each case, the selected texts are rendered as diaries or as first-person narratives describing disturbing situations which are resolved either through reading, writing or merely adjusting. In this article, the author discusses text interrogation as an instructional approach for instructors to use to introduce some of these literary works. Using this approach, the instructor uses focused questions to develop proximity to the text and to anticipate and address some of the historical and contextual information that will have to be carefully explained to youngsters. This approach promotes literacy in three ways: (1) using a compelling genre; (2) providing readers with opportunities to articulate reactions, personal positions, fears and concerns; and (3) the freedom to decide to "gloss over" what they do not want to read or deal with at the moment. In this day and age, when young adults are gratuitously exposed to scenes of violence in the media, a genre like this one seems most appropriate. The global/transcultural nature of this collection provides a first-person perspective on compelling historical events that had not been unearthed so dramatically before.