A Thank You to Harper Lee
Dear Miss Nelle Harper Lee,
You are beautiful, and you are still a saving grace to many people. People you knew, people you didn’t, people who cried onto a page crinkling the paper. I know you, and I believe you knew of me, of the lives you changed.
I’m not one to cry over celebrity deaths, but I feel like someone I know has passed away. And you’re not a celebrity. You never wanted fame, never wanted this much attention. You wanted to leave a tiny footprint, but instead, you stepped into wet cement. And when it dried, no one wanted to cover it.
Books are everything to me. All I read in public school were Shakespeare plays and novels written by dead white men. I didn’t like them because I couldn’t identify with them, and I feared that I stopped loving books altogether. For years, I fantasized about being a writer. I read children’s books written by women, but nothing that changed the literary world, nothing labeled as part of the cannon. It was the summer before sophomore year. I got the annual list of book choices we could read during the three months we had off.
I didn’t know you were a woman when I read To Kill a Mockingbird. This was what you felt you had to do to be recognized by anyone. You shielded a part of who you were just to send a message the world needed to hear and still does. When I found out you were a woman, I didn’t know what to make of it because I didn’t know women have the power to have a written voice like yours and the ability to convey much-needed meaning. I didn’t think I had a chance to write something that mattered. And now, I’m a writer because I know I have a voice. It was you who gave it to me, who fostered my aspiration into reality. It can be done. You proved it.
I also want to apologize for buying Go Set a Watchman. You never wanted it to be published, to be seen by so many people. You only wanted To Kill a Mockingbird to stand as your precious gift to us, one found in the hole of a tree. You didn’t want fame; you wanted privacy like Boo Radley. And we couldn’t even give you that. I was selfish for buying Go Set a Watchman, but I only wanted to take a peek inside your mind, if only for another couple hundred pages. I wanted to know how a first draft can evolve into another story. I will continue to tell people it’s a draft, not a sequel, to tell them we have the privilege to see a raw image of how you saw Maycomb County, which I’m positive exists though perhaps only intangibly. Readers were upset about Atticus, but really, that Atticus doesn’t exist — should never have existed outside your bedside drawer.
“I want to be like Atticus.” I hear this from so many men. They want to have the strength and courage like him. They want to have his resilience, his dedication to doing what’s right. I think many of us, male and female, want to be like Atticus Finch, and this is only an endeavor made possible because you gave him to us.
But Scout. I saw myself in Scout during my first read. And my second. And my third. And now. I still think about her, like she’s a friend of mine I know from when I was younger. I wonder how she’s doing, how she’s getting by, if she’s still six. I hope she still wears overalls and isn’t afraid to get them dirty. Scout and I went on adventures. We kept each other in check, and by that I mean kept each other imaginatists — there’s no proper word to describe our friendship. I’ll keep thinking about Scout, and I’ll keep wondering if she’s going to be just like her father.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
You are not powerful because you are a woman. You are powerful because you chose to be. And I will never be able to give back to you a fraction of the life and hope you have given to me. You told me to jump with my eyes closed, and if I want it, I can make it. Thank you for that notion, the possibility. Thank you for the lives I hope to touch like you have done so flawlessly. And thank you for you.
With all my love,
Courtney Luk
