Item #12820 [Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico]. Mexico, Experiment in International Living, Mary Brooks Hollis.
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].
New Hampshire High Schooler Living Experimentally in Mexico in the Summer of 1940

[Archive of Manuscript Letters, an Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album, and Assorted Ephemera Documenting the Experiences of Mary Brooks Hollis While Participating in the Experiment in International Living in Mexico].

[Various locations in Mexico: 1940]. Six autograph letters, signed, totaling twelve pages and approximately 7000 words, all written on quarto sheets of onionskin paper. Folded, minor wear. [with:] Annotated vernacular photograph album. [13] leaves, illustrated with 101 photographs and three picture postcards. Contemporary cork covers, string-tied, with title in green on front cover with a small illustration of a sombrero-clad figure riding a burro at bottom right. Covers worn and dust-soiled, rear cover detached and with chip to bottom corner. [and:] Small group of ephemeral items. Very good overall. Item #12820

An informative collection of original letters and photographs memorializing the adventures of Mary Brooks Hollis of Concord, New Hampshire in the summer of 1940, when she traveled to Mexico to participate in the Experiment in International Living. Mary Brooks Hollis Plaut (1920-2002) lived most of her life in Keene, New Hampshire after attending Bryn Mawr, and worked energetically in the local community. The Experiment in International Living began in 1932 to offer immersive homestay experiences for American high school students in various international settings. The Experiment still functions today, and is still committed to its mission "to improve understanding across cultures and expand the worldview of U.S. students."

The half-dozen letters in present archive were written by Hollis to her mother between July 22 and August 20, 1940. Hollis's handwriting is small and pinched, allowing for a voluminous amount of content in the twelve pages she writes here from Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Tamazunchale, Mexico, with a brief section of her last letter written from Laredo, Texas while on the way home. In her letters, Hollis details her activities in Mexico, which include taking Spanish lessons, visiting San Pedro and witnessing local artists and artisans at work, traveling to El Salto Falls (which she was quite unimpressed with), commenting on the differences in driving habits in Mexico, visiting other smaller towns, and much more. She occasionally includes drawings within the text to illustrate items about which she's writing. Hollis's letters are interesting not only for content but for her honest, and even sometimes caustic tone.

The photograph album accompanying Hollis's letters opens with several portraits and group shots of local Mexican men and women whom Hollis met and the house where she stayed in Guadalajara. This is followed by a series of images beginning with the manuscript title, "Experiment in International Living Trip to Mexico 1940 (Guadalajara)." This section opens with numerous shots on the road to Mexico, which seems to have begun in Aurora, Indiana. One notable photo taken along the way pictures a house belonging to "Sharecroppers - Poplar Bluffs Missouri." More than half of the photographs picture the people and places Hollis encounters in Mexico at the previously-mentioned locations, and also Jacala, San Andres, Santa Anita, Xochimilco, Taxco, and Cholula. Hollis captures architecture, street scenes, local people, and more.

The collection is accompanied by a small group of ephemera, including a letter sent to Hollis while in Mexico, a letter sent home by the program to parents in July 1940 providing an update on the trip, a small envelope of additional photographs, a map of Mexico, a newspaper clipping of an article on the trip (naming and picturing Hollis and others), and the April 1941 issue of Bulletin of the Pan American Union with an article on the trip.

Price: $850

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