For instance, sometimes an open letter is intended to call someone out publicly, like this one written to Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook (now Meta), by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin in 2019. Here is how it begins:
Mark,
In 2010, I wrote “The Social Network” and I know you wish I hadn’t. You protested that the film was inaccurate and that Hollywood didn’t understand that some people build things just for the sake of building them. (We do understand that — we do it every day.)
I didn’t push back on your public accusation that the movie was a lie because I’d had my say in the theaters, but you and I both know that the screenplay was vetted to within an inch of its life by a team of studio lawyers with one client and one goal: Don’t get sued by Mark Zuckerberg.
It was hard not to feel the irony while I was reading excerpts from your recent speech at Georgetown University, in which you defended — on free speech grounds — Facebook’s practice of posting demonstrably false ads from political candidates. I admire your deep belief in free speech. I get a lot of use out of the First Amendment. Most important, it’s a bedrock of our democracy and it needs to be kept strong.
But this can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together. Lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.
But an open letter doesn’t have to be written by someone famous to someone famous. In An Open Letter to the Woman Who Told My Family to Go Back to China, the journalist Michael Luo addresses an anonymous woman on the street. It begins:
Dear Madam:
Maybe I should have let it go. Turned the other cheek. We had just gotten out of church, and I was with my family and some friends on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We were going to lunch, trying to see if there was room in the Korean restaurant down the street. You were in a rush. It was raining. Our stroller and a gaggle of Asians were in your way.
But I was, honestly, stunned when you yelled at us from down the block, “Go back to China!”
Open letters can also honor and thank someone, and call attention to the continued importance of their work. In 2017, at the end of Barack Obama’s tenure as president, the rapper T.I. wrote him an open letter:
You entered humbly into our worlds from the streets of the South Side of Chicago and galvanized a generation. You resonated from the barbershops to the airwaves to the streets of every hood across America. Many of US did not know your name, nor did we truly understand the impact you would have on the world in the years, months and days that followed.
As I reflect, I am filled with gratitude, outrage, grief, anger, humility and appreciation, both for the things you helped bring to light and the many things we still have yet to realize.
Or they can inspire and motivate, as the columnist Timothy Egan’s letter “Dear Graduate,” from 2009, does. Here’s an excerpt:
Eat a hot dog. With lots of mustard. The kind you can get for two dollars from street vendors just outside the ballpark, a trick I picked up from Ash Green, gentleman editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He passed this wisdom on before the recession.
While we’re on the subject: Learn to cook, something they don’t teach at fancy-pants colleges. Millions for quantum physics and deconstructing Dostoevsky, nothing on how to make enchiladas for 20 people.
At times, your life will have moments, days, even weeks of despair. Trust me: there is no bout of blues that a rich Bolognese sauce, filling every cubic inch of kitchen air, cannot cure.
And that brings me to: Take risks. I don’t mean ski the double diamond runs, ask for a card in blackjack with 15 showing and the dealer holding a king, or hit a high note in a karaoke bar, while sober. That goes without saying.
Students, read the open letters above, and then tell us: To whom would you most like to write an open letter?
Here are some questions that can help you brainstorm which audience you might want to address:
Is there someone famous who has made you mad, or has intrigued or impressed you? Or someone to whom you’d like to offer your expertise, advice or opinion? Like a politician, an athlete, a leader of a corporation, an artist or an entertainer?
Is there a powerful person or institution that you’d like to call out publicly? Someone who you believe needs to be held accountable in some way? What have they done that you think others need to know about?
Is there a person or group you would like to inspire or motivate to take action? What is it that you want them to consider, reflect on or do?
Is there someone closer to home, like a parent, a friend, a teacher or a neighbor, you’d like to address? What would you say to this person that would be meaningful, important and appropriate for a general audience to hear?
Is there a person or group you would like to address because you want to honor or thank them or to reflect on their contribution to society, as T.I. did in his letter to Mr. Obama? What has this person or institution done, and what effect has it had on you and others? Why do you think it’s worth acknowledging publicly?
If no one person or group comes to mind, perhaps a cause or issue inspires you.
For a decade we ran an editorial contest, and the students who participated in it wrote passionately about all kinds of things: artificial intelligence, fast fashion, race, transgender rights, college admissions, parental incarceration, fan fiction, snow days, memes, being messy and so much more. You can still write about the issues and ideas that fire you up — but this time around you’ll be writing a letter to a person who has the power to bring change or understanding to that issue. Here are some questions that might help you brainstorm:
What causes or issues do you care about? Why are they important to you? What experiences do you have with them?
What would you like to see change? Why? How would that change be meaningful to you or to the communities you care about?
What do you wish more people understood? What is something you know a great deal about that you think others would benefit from understanding better?
Once you have a sense of your issue, ask yourself:
Who can make a change, big or small, local or global, to address this issue?
In the comments, tell us to whom you’d like to write an open letter, the reason you’re writing and why you think that issue is important not only for the recipient but also for a wider audience.
Then, if you’re so inspired, you can turn your comment into an open letter and submit it to our contest. Find out more about how to write your letter in our forthcoming guide.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
