On Jessica’s letter, and on reaction to her first letter.
New York City
November 22, 2000
Dear Readers,
Today’s letter is from Jessica Willis, formerly of gliterry, glamorous New York City, presently of broad-shouldered, no-nonsense Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Jessica wrote about her heroin addiction and arrest and incarceration and recovery in her remarkable first letter, which was written on Easter Sunday but which we published in October, as part of ourweeklong series of letters by and about women in the mental-health system. Her letter sparked an unusually passionate response from readers, such as this email from a reader in British Columbia: “I just read Jessica Willis’s letter in the new issue and I had to write in and say — Holy Shit.”
Jessica’s first letter is definitely a useful complement to today’s letter – as is the editor’s letter that accompanied it, in which you can read about Jessica’s past, writing for the New York Press, and how she came to contribute to Open Letters.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, a traditional holiday of football and ballot recounting, and so we’re going to leave Jessica’s letter up for an extra day, out of gratitude. We’ll have a new letter on Friday; please check back in with us then.
Yours truly,
