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A Little Queermas Carol
Marley was dead. Unable to cope, Ebe wields their politics as a excuse to deny their desire for a Leather family. Trauma and imagination come to life through visions of drag queens and dolls, while Leather Daddies bake holiday cookies in this tender queer reimagined Christmas tale.
75 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 24, 2017
This remake of "A Christmas Carol" is one that Dickens would have recognized in essence, but not in details. Ebe is a person dedicated to the cause of social justice and progressive change, publisher of a free radical paper. They recently lost Marley, their best friend and partner - not in romance but in life work - maybe to suicide, maybe not. Ebe poignantly thinks "The police said it was suicide, but that's what everyone thinks when someone dies. I guess that's what it means to be young and queer, everyone just fucking walking around terrified about who in the community is going to do it next. It's a fucked up way to live...." It's a sad reflection of how hard it is to be young and genderqueer, especially without much support.
So Ebe, our Scrooge character, is a grump who works all the time, because they are locked into grief, and a desperate need to have purpose. They have reached a point where any time off to do anything fun or pleasurable is time stolen from the vital mission of saving the world. And the superficial commercialization and holiday-making of Christmas is more of the same. Ebe wants a Daddy-(or Mommy)-and-little relationship, and even has someone who is interested, but they can't convince themself that this is something they are allowed to have. Especially at Christmas. Their safeword is HUMBUG.
There is perhaps a bit of a concerted effort to use every non-binary pronoun for someone in this book, but it isn't inappropriate for the community in which Ebe lives. I would actually have liked to see this work out more slowly and organically. In true Christmas Carol fashion, Ebe encounters the ghosts of Christmas, and is changed by them, but it's a bit artificial in a story that felt steeped in realism to that point. Still, this was a short holiday novella with enough appeal to keep me reading, poignant moments, and representation of people who don't get a lot of page time.
So Ebe, our Scrooge character, is a grump who works all the time, because they are locked into grief, and a desperate need to have purpose. They have reached a point where any time off to do anything fun or pleasurable is time stolen from the vital mission of saving the world. And the superficial commercialization and holiday-making of Christmas is more of the same. Ebe wants a Daddy-(or Mommy)-and-little relationship, and even has someone who is interested, but they can't convince themself that this is something they are allowed to have. Especially at Christmas. Their safeword is HUMBUG.
There is perhaps a bit of a concerted effort to use every non-binary pronoun for someone in this book, but it isn't inappropriate for the community in which Ebe lives. I would actually have liked to see this work out more slowly and organically. In true Christmas Carol fashion, Ebe encounters the ghosts of Christmas, and is changed by them, but it's a bit artificial in a story that felt steeped in realism to that point. Still, this was a short holiday novella with enough appeal to keep me reading, poignant moments, and representation of people who don't get a lot of page time.
January 8, 2017
This was the first book I finished for 2017 as part of my husband and my project to sit back and read without electronics of any kind on Sunday mornings as scheduled reading time.
A Little Queermas Carol is adorable.
It's not the kind of thing I expected to say about a Queer Leather Little retelling of A Christmas Carol, but then again, having been lucky enough to meet Sassafras Lowrey a few times at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, it's a combination in retrospect that makes perfect sense. Much like Leather Ever After: An Anthology of Kinky Fairy Tales envisioned familiar fairy tales with a kinky and erotic lens to amazing effect, A Little Queermas Carol takes on a genderqueer Little/Daddy dynamic and brings forth the same result: a great narrative that invites in the very people that the original version of the tale would never have dreamed to even mention, let alone include.
Even better, that spirit of light-hearted joy that so infuses a Little narrative doesn't shy away from the hurts and pains that many queer Littles have experienced. This isn't a story of sunshine and rainbows, much like the original Dickens, and is instead a story of someone taking their pain and finding the joys and rainbows where they can—which, as in the real world, is often in the company of others like themselves who can truly empathize.
Am I overanalyzing? Maybe. But I don't think so. Anyone who knows me knows I spend a lot of time discussing how we queerfolk don't inherit our cultural narratives, on account of the vast majority of us not having a genetic lineage of queerness to create a constancy. Instead, we have to find each other, have to actively seek out our histories (assuming those histories have even been told) and all of this while doing the basics we need to do to survive what can often be a very hostile world. That Tiny Tim here is a weak-but-loving puppy, that Fred is a Daddy, and Marley is a former musician and that the lending house is instead an activist newspaper is the tinsel trimming on the tree: these are the queer families we create when the biological ones walk out.
Stories like A Little Queermas Carol are exactly the kind of narratives we need: stories that remind us we exist, have always existed, and will continue to exist. The spirits of past, present, and future queerness are very much alive in this novella.
A Little Queermas Carol is adorable.
It's not the kind of thing I expected to say about a Queer Leather Little retelling of A Christmas Carol, but then again, having been lucky enough to meet Sassafras Lowrey a few times at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, it's a combination in retrospect that makes perfect sense. Much like Leather Ever After: An Anthology of Kinky Fairy Tales envisioned familiar fairy tales with a kinky and erotic lens to amazing effect, A Little Queermas Carol takes on a genderqueer Little/Daddy dynamic and brings forth the same result: a great narrative that invites in the very people that the original version of the tale would never have dreamed to even mention, let alone include.
Even better, that spirit of light-hearted joy that so infuses a Little narrative doesn't shy away from the hurts and pains that many queer Littles have experienced. This isn't a story of sunshine and rainbows, much like the original Dickens, and is instead a story of someone taking their pain and finding the joys and rainbows where they can—which, as in the real world, is often in the company of others like themselves who can truly empathize.
Am I overanalyzing? Maybe. But I don't think so. Anyone who knows me knows I spend a lot of time discussing how we queerfolk don't inherit our cultural narratives, on account of the vast majority of us not having a genetic lineage of queerness to create a constancy. Instead, we have to find each other, have to actively seek out our histories (assuming those histories have even been told) and all of this while doing the basics we need to do to survive what can often be a very hostile world. That Tiny Tim here is a weak-but-loving puppy, that Fred is a Daddy, and Marley is a former musician and that the lending house is instead an activist newspaper is the tinsel trimming on the tree: these are the queer families we create when the biological ones walk out.
Stories like A Little Queermas Carol are exactly the kind of narratives we need: stories that remind us we exist, have always existed, and will continue to exist. The spirits of past, present, and future queerness are very much alive in this novella.
December 27, 2018
A faithful and creative retelling of A Christmas Carol with capitalism replaced by The Cause and blood family replaced by a found BDSM family. Tiny Tim is a dog named Tiny and the ghost of Christmas Future is a drag queen. Ebe using HUMBUG as their safeword was absolutely brilliant; easily my favorite integration. It was almost as if this book was finally showing the story as it always should have been. Marley was dead to begin with, just like in the original, but I felt like there should have been an earlier mention of Ebe's potential Daddy and sibling. I enjoyed everything else immensely, though. The emotions were authentic, including the conflicting feelings of wanting something but not believing they deserved it or that they wouldn't ruin it. But what Ebe needs is a patient, understanding Daddy and that's definitely what Freddie is. Awww! Definitely a heart-warming, feel-good holiday story!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2019
I literally could not put this down and read it all in one setting! I recently became a fan of Sassafras through Hir YouTube channel for littles. I’ve always been a huge fan of the classic Christmas Carol story, and this little, queer, leather version is just soooooooo goooooood! I would highly recommend it for anyone with identities or lifestyles that are represented within the book or anyone who enjoys modern retellings of classics.
December 26, 2016
What a cute retelling of the Dickens tale with a queer overly devoted to "the cause"! A lovely, helpful, quick read, esp for a queer like me with a fair amount of the Ebe(neezer) in them.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews