Love Letters Past & Future

 

Family ties, love, maintaining connections, resources, political power dynamics and more link these two superficially different books, nonfiction versus fiction, historical fact versus futuristic speculation. These letters record, examine, testify, process, implore, admonish, celebrate the breadth of human experiences. 

I Can’t Wait to Call You My Wife, African American Letters of Love and Family in the Civil War Era by Rita Roberts 

non-fiction history 

Chronicle Books, October 18, 2022 

https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/i-cant-wait-to-call-you-my-wife?_pos=1&_sid=521df2c94&_ss=r 

In the acknowledgments the author expresses her intention to use “letters to provide a more real and personal understanding of the past” in order to share the history of African American experiences with non-academic audiences. She achieves that goal. Images, maps, newspapers, pamphlets, portraits, handbills, and marriage licenses support detailed historical facts animated by the intimate written correspondence of Black people. This passage from page 31 summarizes the range, depth, and nuances: 

…In the following correspondence, status, class, and regional distinctions are evident, as are urban and rural differences… reveal the incredible complexity of African American lives in this period…these letters illustrate this diversity of black life. 

Letters between parents and children, spouses, extended family, courting couples, lovers, close friends, allies, supplicants, and even slaveholders and the formerly enslaved resonate with universal themes of human connection, weariness, resolve, and celebration of victories minute to massive in addition to mundane activities. The paths of famous abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Bishop Loguen, the Grimke sisters*, and others are entwined with those of everyday families, enslaved Emily and Adam Plummer in Maryland, the free Rapiers in Alabama, and the free mulatto Ellisons, slave owners in South Carolina. Their true stories weave throughout the three main sections of the text: Antebellum, Civil War, and In the Aftermath of War. 

I Can’t Wait to Call You My Wife is a compelling read for everyone interested in understanding the source of the current political turmoil in the United States. Factually dense and emotionally faceted, this text alternates historical details, images, actual letters, context, and discussion calibrated to make the information easy to digest and engaging for the average reader and dedicated historian. 

*The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge is scheduled for release November 8, 2022.

The Moonday Letters 

A journey through time and space where Earth’s future hangs in the balance 

Emmi Itaranta 

science fiction 

Titan Books, July 2022 

By the late 2100s space travel is the norm and there are human settlements on the moon and Mars in addition to Earth, which is struggling with a food crisis and other challenges. Against this backdrop healer Lumi Salo documents her search for her ethnobotanist spouse, Sol Uriarte. Sensuous writing links journal entries as letters, transcripts, encrypted messages, footnotes, encyclopedia entries, odd encounters, poems, and song lyrics into a dreamy, mystical surrealism. A blend of Norse and Indigenous lore with African and Greco-Roman mythologies guides readers through a timeline that shifts between present and past. Is Lumi a reliable narrator? How many secrets is Sol hiding? An intriguing prologue, three parts, and the epilogue answer those questions and many others in this eloquent homage to nature as science that endures despite the hubris of the human species and the inflated egos of individuals. Its lyrical sensibilities also make it an ode to grief and the endurance of love. 

[Cover art photo collage: The Time of Your Life (Millionaires Club #2) by Sandra Kitt release date of April 11, 2023 via eARC courtesy of NetGalley, stress relief reads Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane and Well, That Was Unexpected by Jesse Q. Sutanto from https://maryland.overdrive.com/]