An Open Letter to Orson Scott Card

Dear Mr. Card,

This is my first time writing a letter to any author, so please take a moment and feel special. I hesitate in sending this directly because 1. I am lazy and 2. I couldn’t find a proper address. When I was first urged to read your book, I paused at the thought of starting another science fiction epic, both for apprehension that one could touch A Song of Ice and Fire or Isaac Asimov’s trilogy in my heart and for time restraints. Nevertheless, I went to several bookstores in my search for Ender’s Game. As I read your introduction, I was touched at the connection you have to your work and hoped it’d meet my expectations, which in turn were bolstered by friends’ opinions of your book. I sent frenzied text after frenzied text to them as I read and it hit me. This is a book everyone should read. As you make quite clear before the story even begins, you’ve received many letters from fans detailing the bits that touched them and how your book helped them through arduous times in their lives.

I wish I could say it helped me through a hard time.

Instead, I opt to tell you that I didn’t identify with Ender. I went to classes for the gifted but because I went to an “upper crust” elementary school, I was never alone and I was never teased for my intelligence (there was that one time I was tested for autism for reading ability but that’s another story). It wasn’t even with Valentine that I felt a kinship with as much as I loved her and her part in Ender’s life. It hurt to see myself in Peter, the object of much fear in Ender’s life. As the oldest of three, I bullied my siblings relentlessly from locking one upside down in a closet tied to a vacuum cleaner, to tickling the other until they cried so hard they got hiccups. Maybe this is standard fare for bullying of siblings but at times, I felt so dark inside I wanted to hurt them a little. This could be attributed to numerous things happening around me in my life from 8 years to 13 years.  In the years since, my siblings and I have discussed my torture of them and they couldn’t know how sorry I was for much of my teen years but just couldn’t say. Ender’s Game made me see what a monster Peter was and how much he recognized it, he seemed powerless to stop his assent to evil. That’s not to say we weren’t close growing up; I still talk to them at least once per day but…I was shocked by how I felt about Peter.

Honestly, I’d like to thank you. This book displayed many ways in which innocence is lost and it’s something I feel happens far too often. I was moved to tears and sobbed into my curled up fists by the conclusion. Bravo, sir.

Sincerely,

Leia Calderon