Jo Joy
On Little Women, a new year and gifts given and received.
A feeling like hopscotch. Balanced upon one leg, bending the other at the knee.
Leap and land on two feet.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s…
Turn.
My mother and your mother were hanging out some clothes…
My heart is racing, pounding. I am Jo, beaming, running through a crowd of people on a Manhattan street.
This Christmas was lean for my kid and me and held few presents under our tree. I wasn’t quite sure I should even spend money on a tree. But gifts come in all shapes and sizes. We have each other. We have our health. We have dear friends and still (thank the Cosmos) have my parents, my kid’s only grandparents, though they are far from us and we miss them deeply. It’s the start of a new year, and I’m dwelling on moments of good fortune, random acts of kindness, signposts of positivity pointing, “THIS WAY.” I turned another year older this week and have been busy attending writing panels, workshops, seminars and student readings during the second of two annual residencies that are part of my writing MFA pursuit.
Last week I submitted a tiny haiku to an online contest and learned mine was one among the seven winning haikus. A day or so later my words, even in the form of a brief skeet, were included in an inspiring blogpost entitled A Feminist Map of the Moon by Dr. Space Junk herself, Alice Gorman. (What an honour!) This week also presented opportunity to practice pitching the book I’m writing twice to one agent and one editor, both based in New York. Hearing their input, gleaning their advice, was incredibly helpful and clarifying. I am feeling blessed and very grateful.
Just before Christmas, an e-mail landed in my inbox that began with the word ‘Congratulations.’ The holidays were nearing and I had just wrapped up the first six months (and first graded term) of my current two-year writing MFA pursuit. Academically, I did very well (even if I do say so myself.) My spirit was already quite chuffed despite December and the approach of holidays stirring a high amount of anxiety.
But then this unexpected gift, this moment: my eyes landing on that single word in my inbox—how can I best describe it?
As a longtime documentary photographer, perhaps the best way is visually:
Jo March (Actor Saoirse Ronan), ecstatic, runnng through Manhattan, having sold her story. Credit: Greta Gerwig (Film Director/Writer, Little Women, 2019.)
Reading the e-mail, I embodied Jo. Running. Beaming. Grasping the money her words and mind have earned her.
When I was young, my mother gifted me an enormous illustrated hardcover of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. That December and every subsequent December, ongoing years, I would curl myself into a corner of the sofa or snuggle deeper into my bed and faithfully re-read the book. Of course, I identified with Jo March! The tomboy who had no interest to marry or adhere to the corseted constrictions and ideals of the gender binary. The unruly girl with three sisters. The noncormist who sold her hair, the rebel who ran away from feelings she shooed from her heart while she had yet to understand herself and the life she wanted. The writer who moved to New York and whose wild and wondrous imagination compelled her to pen stories.
I recently revisited two film adaptations: the 1994 version (by Gillian Armstrong) in which Jo is played by the fabulous Winona Ryder and the 2019 version with an equally perfect performance by Saoirse Ronan stepping into the role. I love how Gerwig’s film opens with Jo gathering her breath and her courage to enter the publishing house and barter for the sale of her story.
I hold a deep fondness for much of the 1994 film version. There are certain decisions that drive me bananas about the 2019 version (Friedrich is far too young and French!) But what I do heartily embrace about Greta Gerwig’s more recent interpretation is how much of the film revolves around Jo and her writing. Her will to write at a time when words penned by women were dismissed as fluff. Her determination and stick-to-it-tiveness in the face of societal and gender discrimination. Her journey and growing confidence from claiming in the opening scene she is there to sell a story written by ‘her friend.’ How her content at first caters to what the market will pay to print. Her struggle with writer’s block. Her agency by the end, insisting she keep her own copyright. She grows through the film as a writer from the young girl penning plays and the Pickwick Papers with her sisters in the attic to a published woman who has sold her first novel.
The opening scene came to my mind when I read the e-mail in my inbox. Jo fleeing down the street in uncontained elation.
I’ve been submitting to a literary journal for a few years now without success, a journal that only accepts submissions once a year. Last June, I submitted a piece and just learned in December it had been accepted for publication. Congratulations, announced the e-mail and my heart played pinball for a few minutes beneath my breast.
This forthcoming essay is the first piece of literary writing I’ll be paid for and, even as an emerging writer pursuing her MFA, I struggle to do justice to the moment. I’ve had my words published before. But as I am close to completing my second all-things-writing residency this week in the first year of my degree pursuit to write my book, the revelation that people will pay for the thoughts I craft on paper is an emotion so sublime and quite the timely, solid boost of confidence I need as I continue to work on the manuscript for the book I wish to one day publish. Like a buoy thrown toward me at a time when I’m trying to keep my head afloat and all my current worries and stressors below the surface. I grab hold of it, push my arms through the buoy’s center, driven and determined not to drown or be overwhelmed by current life challenges. We all have them. None of us is alone in this. It’s why I am so grateful to have found community like this one.
I am excited to share the news of my upcoming story once it is officially published.
In the meantime, as the new year begins, I wish this precise feeling of joy to you all. I wish an e-mail, more than one, that begins with the word ‘Congratulations’ to land in your inbox. I wish each of you out there penning your thoughts and stories become flooded and buoyant with the exhilaration of your work being accepted, and the added bonus of words as financial conduit.
I wish you all the “Jo Joy” coming to each of you, to all of us, this year and beyond.
Happy 2025!