In this series of open letters, protagonist Rosa — a struggling young artist — repeatedly addresses writer Chris Kraus to tell her about her estranged mother in hopes that she will read her. Addressing an absent interlocutor who becomes a symbolic mentoring figure, the emotional, self-reflective, increasingly cathartic letters arise from Rosa’s need to confide in an older feminist in order to come to terms with a series of frustrated expectations and charged life events that have marked her by her late twenties. Inspired by a real-life encounter between the author and Kraus and mixing fact, fiction, and literary mash-up, the letters become far-reaching essays through which Rosa addresses the emotions and issues that run through her life narrative: friendship, sexuality, fandom, translation, #metoo, feminist theory, art and art institutions, toxic family relations, affective capital, precariousness, migration, burnout, and mental health.
Rosa’s letters were mailed to Chris Kraus, initiating a real epistolary exchange with the author. The second series of open letters, which will be addressed to Rosa’s mother, will be published in NO NIIN’s upcoming summer issue.
