A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Agatha Christie, Queen of Mystery

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Agatha Christie, Queen of Mystery (I know, I'm cheating a little to use her for Q, but I don't have a favorite dead writer whose name starts with Q).
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Dear Ms. Christie,

My mother gave me your books to read many years ago. I'd long been a fan of Nancy Drew, and she thought I might be ready for some more adult mysteries.

So I spent a summer working my way through your impressive catalog. I don't know if I read all 66 of your novels, but I made a good attempt! I was an equal opportunity fan, loving both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

I recently revisited your work when the new movie edition of Murder on the Orient Express was made. It was gorgeous, by the way--I bet you would have loved it! Even though I remembered that one well, it was still wonderful to watch the mystery unfold.

That was what I enjoyed in all your books: the chase. Not just the one on the page, but the one between me (the reader) and you (the writer). I'd try and try to guess what the twist was going to be, who the real murderer would turn out to be, or how they did it. And again and again, I'd be wrong.

But I never felt cheated. Sure, there were red herrings, but when the drawing room explanation finally came, the clues had been there all along. No information had been withheld; I just hadn't spotted the details that mattered. It was a kind of literary sleight of hand, and you were a master.

Thanks for the ride!
-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Dorothy Parker

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Dorothy Parker
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Dear Ms. Parker,

I first came to admire you for your quick wit and unapologetic snark. People quote you all the time without knowing it's you they quote:

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone

Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses.

I hate writing, I love having written. 

If you were writing today, you'd be a superstar on Twitter for your brief and expressive poniards.Your Constant Reader reviews are works of art in and of themselves, though I'm glad my own work never passed under your laser eyes. I'm not sure my skin is quite that thick yet!

Your short stories and poems capture the brave front in the face of disillusionment. I suspect your black humor was a coping mechanism for a lot of pain. Your suicide attempts showed that "Enough Rope" --the title of one of your poetry collections--was not just a joke. Your struggles were real and difficult, even when hidden behind a witty remark.

Once you moved on to Hollywood, you worked on so many amazing projects, writing for A Star is Born and The Little Foxes, bringing your sharp tongue into play on some very memorable dialogue. Your words in Bette Davis's mouth? Whew!

I didn't really know about your political life until recently, but you were never afraid to take a stand, even an unpopular one. The world needs more women like you.

Thanks for teaching me that it's okay not to be nice sometimes.
-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Octavia Butler

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Octavia Butler
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Dear Ms. Butler,

I'm sorry that I didn't find you before you died. Yours was not a name I heard until I was older. 

Even though you had built a career by the time I was born, I didn't find you in the used book store where I bought all my science fiction and fantasy as a child and young woman. The shelves there featured lots of the "big names" of our shared genre, Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkein, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne: white guys, every one of them. I read those, and thought I knew what was out there. I missed so much!

Because I'm a white girl myself, and I lived in a place where there were very few people who weren't, it was a long time before I even knew that my reading had been restricted, that I had missed whole other canons of work. It's hard to see outside a box when you're in it, especially when you're young.

Sometime in my thirties, I began to hear your name. I'd see a list of "must reads" and you'd be on it. I was curious, but it was still a few more years until I actually read your work. I met a woman through my writing life who was a big fan of your work. That was a recommendation that bore weight: she didn't waste her time on books that were not of consequence, and she admired your work.

So I picked up Wild Seed. Turns out that was kind of a strange place to start. It's neither your first, nor your most famous book. But I loved it. Sweeping and epic in scale, following immortals Anyanwu and Doro across time, and featuring fascinating powers, I was drawn in immediately. The best parts, for me, were the parts where Anyanwu used her ability to become different animals. I felt each creature with her through your words.

After that I picked up Lilith's Brood, intrigued by the title. Lilith, I figured was going to be the Biblical, mythological woman, a figure I knew little about. She was a whisper on the wind for me. And brood. Such an interesting word, with its implications of breeding programs and chickens and large numbers of children and at the same time a kind of pondering thought, lingering over melancholy and disturbing topics. Turns out that you couldn't have picked a better title for your exploration of the nature of humanity and the implications of gender through the story of a woman who helps humankind survive, in a manner of speaking, through integration with alien species. So much to think about in that trilogy!

You're still on my reading list. My daughter was assigned Parable of the Sower at college this year, and she had a lot to say about it, so I think that will be next. I look forward to learning what else you have to teach me.

-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Anaïs Nin

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Anaïs Nin
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Dear Ms. Nin,

I found your work in college, as many young women do.

Newly freed from my parents supervision and the censorship of high school libraries, where work of a sexual nature was banned if it ever even found a way onto the shelves at all, I was instantly fascinated by your frank and explicit writing about eroticism.

I read your Delta of Venus alongside Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn. The movie Henry and June came out during my college years, and cemented my interest in you, your life, and your work. You me a vocabulary for feelings that were new to me, and a glimpse into a bohemian experimenting sort of life I would not have the courage to live myself.

You were so sexy and so smart at the same time, and it was important for me to learn that a woman could be both of those things at once.

It wasn't all just about sex, though. You had such beautiful language, and in the midst of your stories, there were such gems of philosophy and psychology, such deep understandings of the motivations of human beings. Your journals were fascinating for their insights as well as for the life they shared.

Thank you for sharing your life with me. I'm so sorry it ended in pain. F*ck cancer.
-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley
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Dear Ms. Shelley,

Your biography is a full and varied one full of adventure. You traveled so much, and held your own with some of the biggest name writers of your era. But the part that amazes me is that you did it all when you were still so young! You were just 21 when Frankenstein was published.

Given the impressive nature of your family, it shouldn't be a surprise that you were brilliant. You had better access to education than was usual for a woman of your era, and the variety of your reading fed your mind and allowed you to create one of the most memorable stories of all time. Frankenstein is so instilled in our cultural memory at this point, that we all know the story, even those who have never read it.

I have read it. Several times now. And each time I am horrified not by the creature or the experiment, but by the inhumanity of his treatment by his creator. This intelligent and sensitive side of your creature was lost in early interpretations of your book for stage and screen, but has made it into the mainstream in recent years.

You lived a full and daring life, loving and living as you wished, even if it meant you life was more difficult and you struggled for money and position. I wonder what you might have been if you had lived in another era, one less constrained by limited views of women's virtue and freedoms.

You are definitely one of my literary heroes, one I'd love to walk with, listening to your theories and ideas. You amaze me across centuries.

-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Madeleine L'Engle

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Madeleine L'Engle
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Dear Ms. L'Engle,

I often hear that readers, especially young ones, need both "mirrors" and "windows" in the books they read. They need to see themselves in the stories, and they need a peek into other worlds, a chance to see what's possible outside the boxes they've been raised in. Your books were both of those for me, at the same time.  

A Wrinkle in Time,  A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and A Wind in the Door were among the first fantasy books I ever read. Images from these stories have stayed with me my entire life. Who could forget the three wise women Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit? Not to mention Aunt Beast and The Black Thing?

More important to me than the story itself though, was Meg Murry, the main character. At this point in my life, I had never encountered a heroine in book like Meg. She wasn't hero material. She wasn't the bravest, or smartest, or most beautiful. Unlike Nancy Drew, another favorite of mine at the time, it wasn't clear that she would overcome every obstacle from the outset. Meg struggled.

So far as she (and we the readers) knew, she was just a girl, and an awkward one at that, one who didn't have a lot of friends and struggled to control her anger sometimes. No one special. Not a chosen one. Just a girl.

So many of us grow up feeling like Meg: lonely, ostracized, judged. Sometimes that just adolescence taking potshots at our self confidence, but it doesn't matter if the situation is the objective truth. It's how it feels. And you knew how it felt to be that girl.

Thanks for making me feel seen just when I was feeling very invisible.

Love,
Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Helen Keller

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Helen Keller
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Dear Ms. Keller,

I first heard of you when I was in second grade. We were learning about biography, and yours was one of the names on a list of people we could pick to write a research project about.

When I took the list home and asked my mom and dad about the people on it, I learned that you were deaf and blind, but you had become world famous as a writer and speaker. It was clear that my parents thought you were amazing, so I chose you for my project.

I wasn't really ready to read your autobiography yet, since I was only seven, so I read some children's books about you and watched the movie The Miracle Worker with my mom. The part of your story that struck me at the time was the part about the power of language. You'd always been a bright person full of ideas, but because illness had robbed you of language, you couldn't communicate. Once you learned how, the transformation was as good as any enchantment in a fairy tale.

Around this same time was when I decided for sure that I would be a teacher (and I'm a teacher today, so obviously the idea stuck!). I wanted to be that person who made that connection and difference for someone. Anne Sullivan is certainly an inspiration for the difference one person can make in the life of another.

Sometime, when I was older, I read your autobiographies, The Story of My Life and The World I Live In, as well as Teacher and some of your Journals. I came to admire you all the more for your deep thoughtfulness and your advocacy for the rights of others: women, workers, people with disabilities. You had such a way with words, and such strong opinions.

I admire you still today, for the courage of your convictions and your use of your fame to try and make a difference in the world. I hope someday the world rises to your vision of what it could be.

Love,
Samantha