Introduction

In the summer of 2024, my dad came back from my grandparents’ house with a stack of letters. My dad wrote the letters about 25 years earlier while he was living in Kazakhstan from 1997-1999. My grandma had saved and kept these letters. She had been going through her house and her things so that “when she dies other people don’t have to do that.”

The second he set the collection of letters down, I started reading them. I spent a few hours with them, asking him questions, and reading some of the parts I found funny to whoever would listen. My dad didn’t seem interested in reading the letters, but he did enjoy answering my questions about their content. At that time, I didn’t read through all the letters because he put them away before I finished, but I planned to go back through later. 

In the letters my dad is 21 and 22. Right now, I am 21 and going to be 22 in 4 months. Through reading the letters, I got to see a glimpse into my dad’s life when he was my age: Where was he? What was he up to? What was he thinking about? How did he talk? How did he look? What was important to him? I felt connected to his experiences of living abroad. I’ve lived and gone to school in four countries so I could relate to utility problems, language barriers, being away from family, being amazed by the grocery stores, the multiculturalism, and traveling. There were parts of the letters that stuck out to me because I can see how he hasn’t changed that much. I can imagine him saying what he was writing. His humor, opinions, ambition, and work ethic come through in his writing. 

It’s been over a year since I first read some of the letters, but I kept thinking about them. There are so many cool memories in them. What could I do with them? I thought about how it would be really fun to make a book with them…maybe include the letter and then an interview with my dad, asking him specific questions about the content of the specific letter… kind of like I was doing when I read through them the first time. This digital exhibition project seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something with the letters: to interact with them in a different way, see what new things I can find in them, and maybe be the beginning of a bigger project. 

I was like 70% sure my dad would give me permission to use these letters for this project. I have a feeling he doesn’t really care that much about them because he didn’t re-read them, but he does enjoy talking about his experiences and stories from his time in Kazakhstan or his life in general. He has said that he is grateful that he has the letters because he didn’t keep a journal while he was there, so the letters take the place of one. Before I asked him if I could use his letters for this project, I first told my mom and sister about my idea, and they approved it, and said he probably would too. So, I waited for the perfect time to ask: at one of his favorite dive bars about 3 minutes into his dinner. He didn’t need any convincing and thought it was a good idea. 

Who is my dad? 

Joel Gullickson was born April 4, 1976 in Edina, Minnesota. He grew up in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. After graduating from Simley High School, he attended South Dakota State University before transferring to Concordia University in St. Paul where he earned a degree in sociology with a minor in mathematics. He graduated from college in June 1997, the same month he left for Peace Corps training in Konaev, Kazakhstan. In August 1997, he was assigned to be a volunteer in the village Ushtobe, about a 4 hour drive from the country’s capital at the time, Almaty. He taught English as a Foreign Language at a Russian school in Ushtobe. When he returned to the United States in 1999 he used the skills he learned while in the Peace Corps to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) in a middle school in St. Paul, MN. The ESL teaching role was temporary.  A few months later, he began teaching math at Harding High School in St. Paul where he met another math teacher, Elena Contreras, now Elena Gullickson, who is now his wife and my mom. They got married in 2002. They have 4 children. He currently works at Highland Park Senior High School in St. Paul as a film and woodshop teacher. 

This digital exhibit consists of 10 items: 7 letters, 2 postcards, and 1 printed email that my dad sent from Kazakhstan to his family in Minnesota. His mom kept the envelopes, letters, pictures, and anything else he included. In the exhibition, I include the postcard or the letter and the envelope, if it was still with the letter, and any pictures that he included with the letter. 

There were more than these 10 items in the saved collection, but I selected these because they fit well in conversation with each other and into common broader themes I explore in the exhibit. These themes include communication, technology, lasting Soviet impact in the 1990s Kazakhstan, and family relations. 

Communication: What form of communication is available and used? Paper and pen? Printed letters? Postcards? Email? Phone? All these methods of communication were used or discussed in the letters as well as the difficulty or reason he decided to communicate using that specific method at a certain time or place. An example is the use of a postcard rather than a letter. Both of the postcards are meant to tell his family something quick. The first one is letting them know he arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The second one was something he forgot to mention in his last letter. 

Technology: What technology was available to use to communicate? How did varying access to the internet, electricity, and computers affect everyday life? What was his role in advancing technology at the school where he was teaching? He writes about power outages, access to the internet, and inconveniences about phone and email. Although phone calls and email are a way of more immediate communication than letters, these methods of communication were more expensive or hard to set up. He writes about giving computer lessons to his coworkers and helping them write grants for technology like a fax machine. 

Lasting Soviet impact in 1990s Kazakhstan: What is an American living and teaching in Kazakhstan in the 1990s perspective on Soviet culture, the school system, economy, lasting material culture, language, and history? 

Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in December 1991. That same month, the Soviet Union fell. The Peace Corps is an American organization with the goal to “to promote world peace and friendship through community-based development and intercultural understanding” (.https://www.peacecorps.gov/what-we-do/our-mission/). 

Their website states their three goals as:

     1. To help the countries interested in meeting their need for trained people.

Volunteers exchange skills and knowledge with community members to help create sustainable change through work in six sectors—Agriculture, Community Economic Development, Education, Environment, Health, and Youth in Development.

     2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

Through their service, Volunteers share America and its values and also learn about local cultures, opportunities, resources, and people in their host countries.

     3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Volunteers immerse themselves in local cultures and share their experiences when they return home with family, friends, and the public. This helps promote cultural understanding, volunteerism, and public service

This is the current website and goals listed, but it seems to match up with how my dad would describe the Peace Corps in 1997. 

My dad was volunteering in the Peace Corps at an interesting time, within the same decade that Kazakhstan had declared independence from the Soviet Union. He was part of “Kaz5” meaning that he was part of the 5th group of Peace Corps volunteers to enter Kazakhstan after independence. In one of the postcards he writes that he met a volunteer from “Kaz3” who is from Minneapolis. This time period was an interesting point of transition in culture, politics, and technology which are all represented in these letters. 

Family relations: He usually addresses the letter “Dear Family” but some letters say “Dear Mom, Dad, Eric, & Kathy,” “Dear Mom & Dad & Family,” and “Dear Mom and Dad.” Eric is his brother, and Kathy is Eric’s wife. My dad has an older sister, but she is never addressed in the letters, probably because she was out of the state. While sorting through the letters, I found photocopies of the letters, sometimes two copies and the original. I think my grandma must have made copies and given them to family members. As his daughter, reading these letters over 25 years later, I felt like the “Dear Family” address was also meant for me. Questions I was thinking about while reading these letters were: What kinds of things are included in the letters? What does he not say to his family that he might have included in a letter to his friend? What does he say that seems “unfiltered” that he might only feel comfortable writing to family? 

I organized the items in chronological order and hope that reading them in this order helps to create a narrative. There are gaps in the correspondence due to letters not selected, phone calls that happened in between letters, and letters he received from his family.