I’m one of those people who credits reading Little Women as a kid for inspiring me to be a writer. Like many women who write, Jo March, Louisa May Alcott’s alter ego in the story, was my inspiration. She was forthright to the point of bluntness, awkward, and slightly out of control. Me, too. She didn’t quite fit the expectations of what a girl should be, what a “little woman” should be! Jo was a writer. Me, too! What smart, creative, bookish girl would have wanted to be any of the other sisters? None.
Meg, the oldest sister, was so mild and uninteresting. Her big story was about being so submissive and impressionable that she lets her rich friends dress her up like a doll to go to a dance, where she ends up feeling shame for being so malleable and spineless as to allow it. Then, in an act of self-sabotage and pique, she marries the penniless tutor next door just to spite her aunt. She lives semi-happily ever after, poor, strapped with two kids, and reliant on her mother to help drag her out of her self-pity with platitudes about faith and duty. Good move, Meg.
But who didn’t love Beth? She was the embodiment of tragedy. How romantic! Beth, always such a dear, forever a child playing with her dolls and kittens. Beth was an angelic, selfless little pilgrim, carrying on Marmee’s good work helping out the dirt poor immigrant family down the road. Beth was so virtuous and good, so of course she had to end up dead. We all loved Beth, but nobody wanted to be Beth.
And oh yeah, she played the piano, too. Remember?
Then there was Amy. Everyone knew Amy was the one to hate on. She was so spoiled and selfish, wasn’t she? And OMG! She put Jo’s manuscript in the fire! Unforgiveable. What. A. Bitch. Plus, she stole Jo’s trip to Europe! Sheesh! Silly, frivolous Amy, always taking on airs and thinking she was better than everyone else, right? Besides, we all knew Jo should have ended up marrying Laurie, not Amy. Who could like Amy? Nobody.
I read and re-read Little Women, then went on to read Jo’s Boys and finally Little Men. Multiple times. I loved the world Louisa May Alcott had crafted. It was a world where you were rewarded with love––from Marmee and from God––if you just tried to be good. Sure, the March girls gave up their Christmas dinner to be kind to the poverty stricken Hummels. But then bam! Their rich neighbor showered them with a feast even better than they would have had before! The world of Little Women was so much better than real life.
I watched every movie version of Little Women I could. The 1933 movie with Katherine Hepburn; the 1949 version with Elizabeth Taylor; then the 1994 version with Winona Ryder (love me some Winona!). And then Greta Gerwig did a fabulous take on our favorite sisters’ story. It came out Christmas 2019 and being Jewish––so basically obligated to eat Chinese food and go to the movies on Christmas––of course I went to see it immediately.
The movie created quite a hubbub on social media. There were some folks clutching their pearls, as they saw Saoirse Ronan’s Jo and Timothée Chalamet’s Laurie gender bending and swapping clothes. Scandalous! I was on Twitter back then, and some of my writer friends and I were discussing the movie and Gerwig’s refreshing take on the story. That ending! She went all meta, leaning in to Jo rather than Louisa being the author of Little Women. And then someone––I think it was my buddy Ally Malinenko––commented about what a different story it would have been if one of the other March sisters would have written it. Wouldn’t that be interesting? What would they say? Wouldn’t that be cool?! Um, yes... We dove into our DMs and started talking about writing it.
We wanted to give Meg, Beth, and Amy voices to tell their own stories. Jo wouldn’t have let them, so we decided to leave her off the page entirely. The Other March Sisters was born. Ally wrote Beth. As a cancer survivor herself Ally felt that Beth deserved to be more than just her illness, that she deserved a real life. Ally wrote Beth’s story almost immediately. I wanted to write Amy’s story, and I’ll get to why in a minute. It took me a very long time to complete it. I’m not a fast writer and I was busy living through my own personal tragedies whilst the world shut down because of the pandemic. Giving Meg an interesting story was truly a difficult challenge; Ally and I lost the first writer to give it a go. So when I’d finally finished writing my bit, Ally and I talked about the possibility of teaming up and writing Meg together. But honestly? We had nothing. You’d think I’d somehow relate to all Meg’s motherly domesticity, given I’ve got three kids of my own. Well, you’d be wrong.
So we basically auditioned a few different writers, who all had great takes on Meg. But nothing that sang to us. None of those Megs felt quite right. Finally, the stars aligned, and Liz Parker sent us her idea of Meg with some sample pages. Whoa Nelly! We’d not only found our Meg March, but Liz’s version jumps off the page, grabs you by the heart, and takes you to the most unexpected of places. And Jo? She’s literally not in our book except as referenced by other characters.
Okay, let’s circle back to why I wanted to write Amy’s story and why I’m her biggest fan. I realized, as I dove back into the world of Little Women, what had attracted me to Jo was her queerness, not her being a writer. And let me tell you, my friends, Jo March is very queer. Go re-read Little Women if you don’t believe me. I didn’t see that when I was a kid and I didn’t know I was queer. It took me most of my adult life to work it all out and finally come out. (Yay! Happy Pride, y’all!) But as a writer, as an artist, I am way more like Amy than Jo. I get her artistic sensibility. Amy and I are two peas in a pod. So, what comes out of Amy’s mouth about making art in The Other March Sisters is pure, unadulterated Linda Epstein.
I know I’ve taken the long way around the block to finally get to this, but I want to tell you about something that Liz, Ally, and I were committed to in our revisionist take on the other March sisters. We made it pretty queer. No, all the sisters aren’t lesbians now. Relax. But as the three of us are all queer, we wanted to not only give voice to the other March sisters we also wanted to give voice to all the LGBTQ+ folks in history whose stories were never told. I think Louisa May Alcott would like our book. She was pretty queer herself. If you want to find out more about that you can read this New York Times article or this one from LGBTQ nation.
Want to read The Other March Sisters? You can preorder it! And if you want to get a little taste of the book, download the fall/winter Publisher’s Marketplace Buzz Books. There’s an excerpt and it’s free!
I’d like to add… To anyone who still thinks Amy was a horrible person because she burnt Jo’s manuscript: Get over it. She was 12 years old and Jo treated her like shit. Didn’t you ever do something mean when you were a kid? Leave a comment, because I’d love to know what it was!
Interested in hearing hot takes about Little Women and more about The Other March Sisters? Consider becoming a subscriber. I’ll be writing about that and other writerly, queer, and publishing-type stuff, too!
I am very excited to read this book!
Amazing, Original, Love your Little Women.
Learned alot about those sisters. Linda