Emily Francis Explores the Infinite Connection Found in Letter Writing

In Emily Francis’s book If You Only Knew: Letters from an Immigrant Teacher, she tells her life story through letters to eight of her students. The book is, at moments, wrenching. Francis writes about her childhood in Guatemala, where she helped to raise her four younger siblings after their mother left for the United States to make money for their family. The book is also a bright light, with Francis’s admissions of hard times laced with gratitude, fortitude, and encouragement. 

The way Francis balances life’s obstacles in her letters is a measure of her character. She is warm, ebullient, and empathetic. After what seemed an insurmountable feat, she made it from Guatemala to the United States to bring her dream of being a teacher a reality. Now with If You Only Knew, she wants readers who are facing hard times to know: We are all connected. Often the way to see this truth is through sharing our stories. “We all struggle in some way at some point in our lives, and we often feel alone in those struggles,” Francis writes. “But let these letters remind you that there is always someone out there who’s been through something similar…”  

A Conversation with Emily Francis

Emily, congrats on your book. Let’s start with why you chose letter writing to tell your story. Why was this important to you?

Letter writing was always the way we communicated with our mom. This was back in 1992 when there was no FaceTime; there was no way for us to communicate via phones [from home in Guatemala] because it was just too expensive. So writing letters was a way that told each other what was happening. And at the same time, we were discovering things about our mother and about us that we have never told each other before. 

Letter writing gets deep into how you are feeling. So when we started talking about the book, we talked about telling my story in a memoir, but it just wouldn’t flow the way a certain memoir would. When I started closing my eyes and thinking like my students were in front of me, it clicked. That’s the way a message comes across with feeling and touch. That’s when we decided to go with the letter-writing format. 

What do you hope readers take away from your letters? 

I started my career working at the elementary level where we would get immigrant students. But it didn’t hit me as much as when I encountered newcomers, immigrant students, at the high school level. That’s when I realized that they are experiencing what I experienced. I started seeing parts of myself in each one of them. Each story and each letter in the book is how I was able to connect with each one of the students I share about. So in each student, you will see a theme that evolves, whether it’s immigration, family separation, an older sister doing the mother’s job— things like that. So when I wrote these letters, it was with the hope that at least one letter will get to a student’s heart. That they’ll think, That’s me. That’s my experience. I see myself. I’m being reaffirmed. I’m being valued. I’m being seen and heard.  

What have you learned about yourself through letter writing?

I went through school never validating or accepting my own identity. It didn’t come until now as an adult. Those wounds that you experience as a student, I didn’t realize how raw they were still there until I started seeing my students experiencing that. I’ve learned through letter writing and writing this book, making those connections with my students, to heal my wounds and also accept my own experiences in reality. 

Sometimes writing can be a little daunting, especially if you’re looking at a blank page. What is your advice for getting started?

As an English language learner, I’ve found it can be hard to get your thoughts straight to paper. I’ll know what I’m thinking and what I want to say, but as soon as I hold onto that pen to write, it doesn’t flow. What helped me is to begin by speaking it. Tell somebody what you’re thinking, or record it. I have had students who do not want to share with their partners about their experiences, but they want to share them with me, so I ask them to record. When they say it aloud and then play it back it empowers them to then grab a pen and write or go to the computer and type. The process of speaking it and then writing, for immigrants and for anyone, is a powerful thing.