Summer Blogging: Life and Letters VII
Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women by Marnia Lazreg gives us the tradition of the open letter. Even in this digital time, the “open letter” metaphor for a communication with an individual (or here, individuals) that is shared with a greater audience persists. This is perhaps because of the concept of voice in a letter–each letter adopts the tone of voice in the interesting middle ground a letter holds between essay and conversation. You want to let an audience in on something, write an open letter. The perseverance of the metaphor bespeaks the intimate written in a letter, Lazreg’s book is a narrative of her experiences, and the praise for the book centers on her candor–something of course that can be achieved in a letter and makes letters fascinating. While this books uses the “open letter” as a narrative device, it serves well as an illustration of letters in our collection.