At eight years old, scabby-kneed and adventurous, I met my favorite book. It was in early summer, an afternoon in June thick with possibility, and I was bored. I went where I always went when I was bored—a bookshelf. There was nothing there, however, that I hadn’t already read—and that afternoon, Junie B. Jones just wasn’t gonna cut it. After all, I was old enough to read chapter books by then, and that meant I could tackle anything.
My mother handed me her own worn down copy of Little Women, and frankly, it was love at first sight. I read the book in our unkept garden every day of that summer, and in the process, I found my first ever girl crush, Jo March. Jo was smart, she had an income of her own, and she used words to travel the world—she was a freelance writer before there was a term for such a thing, and she lived in an apartment, in a city, by herself.
These days, I am a journalist, freelance writer, and travel writer, and the one thing I always have with me—no matter what country I am in, or what timezone—is whatever novel I am reading at the moment. It hasn’t been little Women in a while now—it’s a bit heavy and thick for international trips. But I still model myself after Jo, a woman who knew who she wanted to be, didn’t take no for an answer, and made her pen her passport.
