Jonathan Safran Foer - I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her...

I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me. What kind of letter? My grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write. You want a letter from me? She asked.I told her yes. Oh, God bless you, she said. The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me.