3 Questions for Robyn Jacob

Q. How did it feel to learn about your family through century-old letters written in a language you don’t read?

A. I had a lovely date with my mom, where we went through the letters together and she translated them for me. But it takes a long time to get through each one, so we only did a few, and they were so packed! They were packed with stuff! It’s now kind of an ongoing project that we have. My mom will explain how different people in the family would have different writing styles—like “So-and-so is very flowery in their writing, and so-and-so is very concise.” And I think the letters are so beautiful that what I should do is have somebody from outside of the family come in and just pay them to translate them all.

A.