Open letters have become ransom notes

In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary genre exhibit striking similarities to the ransom note.

During June’s riots following George Floyd’s murder, a beloved independent bookstore in Denver called The Tattered Cover posted online that the shop would be politically impartial, the better to remain a neutral space for customers. Cue local outrage. Cue the store’s immediate volte-face: fulsome support for Black Lives Matter.

The reversal proved unsatisfactory. Signed by miffed patrons and authors, an open letter to the owners listed ten demands. Among them, the shop must hire more ‘individuals from marginalised backgrounds’, especially at management level, which would presumably entail sacking existing staff; re-configure its stock of books to ‘adequately reflect’ US demographics; donate 10 per cent of its paid promotional space to minority writers; never call the police when disruptive customers are black; and install a ‘voting-empowered board’ of ‘relevant community members’ to control programming.