I remember when I was 7th grade and the Justin Bieber movie came out, my friends and I all made matching shirts that we wore to the premiere of the movie and probably didn’t stop talking about the movie for weeks. As I grew and became more politically aware and I can remember my mother and aunts talking about sending emails and leaving voicemails for  government actors. A lot of the time now, even on the news, when you see a person directly contacting a political figure it is through something like a tweet or post on Facebook. Now if I have something to say to any sort of public figure or celebrity I can send them something directly, either through social media or email. There is no formal structure or really rules about how I have to go about contacting these people and how I have to word myself.

When visiting the RBSC (rare books and special collection) library on the 31st of October I had the privilege to read some of the fan mail written to Canadian poet and author Joy Kogawa. All of the letters were very personal and thought out. Some included questions or were seeking advice and others just wanted to voice how they had connect and been affected by Kogawa’s work. When reading these letters it almost felt like there was a montage flipping through my head of all the ridiculous and inappropriate things I have seen tweeted at celebrates, artists, and political figures. I realized the only times I can recall  sending an actual paper letter to someone was for invitations, thank you cards, and letters home from camp. The fan mail to Kogawa was very personal and well constructed, and this makes sense. Anytime I’ve ever had to send a handwritten letter, even if it was just a holiday greeting card I have really thought about what I was going to say. I can very confidently say I have not put the same amount thought into most of the things I put on social media as I do for letter writing.

I took a larger step back and began to think about the RBSC as a whole. In the future when building fonds will they have to account for the emails and comments sent to public figures via social media? How will the rapid change in communication and the ability to contact almost anyone in the world change how we record people’s history and their effects on their audience? Will what we have in the RBSC soon just become an archive on wikipedia or something you can access via google? All of this takes me to thinking about Marita Sturken book Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. In the introduction of her book Sturken talks about how cultural memories shape and affect our historical memories of things. Soon it seems handwritten fan mail will be replaced by electronic messages. Without having these letters that people had to sit down and really think about what they were going to say, I worry our memories of how certain authors like Joy Kogawa, and other figures in the media will be skewed by the fact that there’ll only be tweets and emails to look back on.

sources:

Sturken, Marita. Tangled memories: the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, and the politics of remembering. Univ. of California Press, 2009.