Nothing to Write Home About

"In the context of surging interests in reconciliation and decolonization, settler colonialism increasingly occupies political, public, and academic conversations. Turning from the emphasis on Indigenous-settler relations and state policy, Nothing to Write Home About uncovers the colonial significance of trans-imperial families, the everyday, and silence in British family correspondence sent between the United Kingdom and British Columbia between 1858 and 1914. Drawing on thousands of letters, Nothing to Write Home About is a detailed study offering insights into epistolary topics including intimacy and conflict, boredom and food, and what correspondents chose not to write about. Analyzing both the letters' content and their loaded silences, Laura Ishiguro traces how Britons used the post to navigate the family separations integral to their migration and understand British Columbia as an uncontested settler home. This book argues that these letters and their writers played a critical role in laying the foundations of a powerful, personal settler colonial order that continues to structure the province today. Nothing to Write Home About is the first substantial study of family correspondence and settler colonialism. By underscoring the entwined significance of family and the everyday in a formative period in British Columbia, it offers a timely new lens into the global and local dynamics of settler colonialism."--