Letter Writing Invitation
Welcome to the letter writing exercise! This project was designed with the conviction that healing is both spective and active. That is, healing means 1. an introspective, thoughtful reckoning with violent systems of colonialism, racism, and racial capitalism and their intersections, and 2. a prospective envisioning of more just worlds, inspired by such worlds that already exist. Alongside a pensive reckoning is an active one, as reflection begets insight, and insight, determination to resist dispossession and desecration of the soil. The concept of the Anthropocene (portrayed with such apocalyptic imaginaries as a force Global, Impending, Calamitous and Speedy) stuns with its monstrous scale of impending devastation. How to begin to conceptualize and grasp? What can I, so small I am, do to contest it?
In this project, the first possible step is to sit down and write a letter. If healing means reformulating a thoughtful relation to ourselves, our neighbours, and our shared earthly home, then letter-writing and sending provides a way to connect to others. Through this exercise, you may find that written words of hope slip into affectionate and imaginative extremes; that letters let you write into the future from the past, and show how time is not so linear; that conversations about the fate of our environments are peopled, specifically, by you and others; that it is worth it to hope for an outcome that may never come (letters get lost!) because the hoping alone is itself transformative.
~ Yardain, Rachel, Jessie, Gabby, and Corrine
To participate, print out the prompt below. Attach this prompt to a written letter to a friend, and send through snail mail.
You have curiously torn this envelope, unfolded and read this letter, smooth and foreign between your fingers, sent from a fellow person on this shared planet. You have become, wittingly or unwittingly, part of this collective project. You must have so many questions! But first, welcome.
We’re a group of graduate students who believe that detachment between people, human and nonhuman, enshrines environmental injustice. We fancy ourselves scholar-activists, meaning we understand there is no such thing as studying the world without also remaking the world in some way. Thankfully, the world is not formed solely by graduate students! Which is where you come in.
Our project aims to re-forge connection between people through a simple and somewhat bygone practice: letter writing. Letters provide time and space for slow reflection; they remind us that connection can transcend space without screens; they arrive in mailboxes as gifts from one to another. Sitting down to write a letter, sending it, receiving and reading it, pondering it, fingering it, documenting it, sharing it … all of these are small actions that reach out, connecting ourselves to the earth and the communities upon it.
If you’d like to participate, please write a letter in response to or inspired by the one you received (check out the prompts below on the flip-side for ideas). Instead of posting it back to the sender, address it to someone else—someone you wish to (re)connect with. Of course, if you want to respond to the original sender, go right ahead!
With your permission, we will display your material letters online, so that we can see the connections digitally as they are forged in our real world. We believe this too is world-making; as we see the letters traverse space to each of yous, we collectively re-forge the world itself as more connected.
- Take a photograph of the letter you sent and/or received (all of it or just parts)
- Upload your letter to this link
- Write your letter in the medium of your choice (pen & paper, the back of your student loans, a cocktail napkin…), and snap a quick picture just in case it does not reach its destination
- Send your letter to a person of your choosing!
PROMPTS BELOW:
Here are a couple of prompts to get you going, or you can choose to write your heart:
Prompt a) Write a letter to your descendants, seven generations down. Discuss your shared home planet. What do you need to tell them about how your people lived upon this Earth?
Prompt b) What is something or someone that you love? With the changing world, many of us must anticipate losing those beings and objects that give our lives meaning. Write a love letter to that person(s)/being/object.
Prompt c) Reflecting on the current state of our world, what objects would we be better off without? Write a breakup letter to that object.
Prompt d) Recall a creature you were fond of as a child. How are their lives impacted by the climate crisis? Write a letter to a younger version of yourself explaining what extinction is and why it is happening now.
Want to see some examples of our letters to each other? Click below!