Desirable Futures: Write Me a Letter

Authors

  • Mabel Gergan Department of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University
  • Pallavi Gupta Department of Geography and Environment, University of Hawai'i-Manoa
  • Lara Lookabaugh Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Vanderbilt University
  • Caitilin McMillan Department of Geography and Environment, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Sara Smith Department of Geography and Environment, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Pavithra Vasudevan Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Keywords:

anticolonial praxis, feminist methods, world building futurists, temporality, letters, futures

Abstract

In this special issue, we propose the letter as a form with geographic potential. Building on prior work on letters in geography, Black feminism, and Indigenous studies, we draw on a collection of sixteen letters in the section to build a case for letters as time travel, anticolonial epistemology, feminist geographic method, and worldmaking praxis. We bring together letter writers who speak to their ancestors known and unknown, to future generations, to ideas, to activists, to places, and to strangers—and weave them into a messy and generative conversation on the kinds of spaces that letters make between and among us. Our intention is to build on recent work in geography to experiment with what the letter makes possible for us as geographers.

 

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A collage of photos and materials provided by issue authors. These include: a photo of a landscape with stars shining above a curved snowy road disappearing into a wooded horizon along the coast of Gichigami/Lake Superior; a cutout of cursive text written by Caitilin McMillan’s mother that reads “to the world's best heart”; a photo of Neelofer Qadir’s hand holding colorful postcards in front of the blue water of Gris Gris, Mauritius; a handwritten letter in Spanish dated August 1983 from Alana de Hinojosa’s grandmother to her mother, Evelina “Bebe”, asking for her to come back home to Calexico, California; a black-and-white troll block print and a Valentine's Day card with porcupine quills piercing a red-and-black heart and the handwritten message “Happy Valentines Day! Contains two genuine porcupine quills, picked clean by ravens. Love, Elspeth”; a black-and-white photograph of Dr. Donald Deskins Jr. in a three-point stance wearing a football uniform; a colourful poster with doves and peace flowers and text that reads “Viva! Viva! Palestina!”; an orange envelope reading “don't you dare write back!” with a hand-drawn scowling figure; a screenshot of a Zoom grid of smiling attendees at the American Association of Geographers 2021 Desirable Futures sessions; and background text and images from valentines written by Elspeth Iralu.

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Published

2024-04-15

How to Cite

Gergan, M., Gupta, P., Lookabaugh, L., McMillan, C., Smith, S., & Vasudevan, P. (2024). Desirable Futures: Write Me a Letter. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 23(2), 91–106. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/2318

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 2 (2024): Desirable Futures

Section

Special Issue: Desirable Futures

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Mabel Gergan, Pallavi Gupta, Lara Lookabaugh, Caitilin McMillan, Sara Smith, Pavithra Vasudevan

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