According to an exclusive by Entertainment Weekly, Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women” will be “reimagined” in a graphic novel in honor of its 150th anniversary. Except this one will have a twist: The title character Jo March will be lesbian.
“A whole new generation is about to be introduced to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the classic novel will be adapted into a vibrant graphic novel form for young readers, in celebration of its 150th anniversary,” reports EW.
The new version will be titled, “Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.” EW says that “the March family is blended, multiracial and LGBTQ inclusive, with updates making it resonant to an even wider swath of today’s young readers.”
In a statement, self-described “queer writer” Rey Terciero said she wrote Jo March as a lesbian to reflect herself.
“I loved Little Women growing up,” said Terciero. “Their struggles felt universal to me, especially feeling like I always had less than others. So it’s an absolute honor to be writing a re-telling of it. But [artist] Bre [Indigo] and I wanted to see ourselves in the characters too, which is why we made the family diverse and one of the characters LGBTQ. Jo is my favorite, so I wanted to play with the subtext that may not have been available 150 years ago, but that we can speak openly about these days. Being LGBT myself, I’m just happy to be creating a book that I wish I could have read as a young reader. But it’s also very PG, and very sweet. I wanted to be sensitive with the heavy topics while staying true to Alcott’s vision of empowering young women.”
All Terciero had to do was write her own book if she wanted to reflect her identity, but, similar to the recent butchering of the Opera “Carmen” for the sake of #MeToo, she elected to distort a classic book for political and ideological purposes.