Picture this: a desk, a pen, a piece of paper. In the days before smartphones, before texting, even before email, people sat down to write letters. Imagine waiting days or even months for a message to arrive. While a text message may be only a few words, or even a tiny cartoon figure, a handwritten letter could be pages and pages long.
Before the publication of his book, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nahisi Coates wrote a letter to his fifteen-year-old son, which was published in The Atlantic. In his letter, Coates writes to his son of his fears for him and for other young men of color. “The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy,” he writes of this particular moment in human history. In the comment box below, imagine you are writing a letter. Who would you write to? What would you say? What is important to the person receiving your message to know? Maybe, after you write your letter, you’ll send it. Wouldn’t that be something.
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About this blogA blog is an online conversation. This one is for students of writing and is an extension of our face-to-face classroom. Here is where we can continue a discussion started in class, ask questions, and test new ideas. Archives
March 2020
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