How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us
May 20, 2024
Journalist Bergstein (Brilliance and Fire) delivers a satisfying tribute to YA author Blume that emphasizes her novels’ feminist bona fides and traces her life story against the backdrop of cultural shifts around women’s sexuality and place in society. Crediting Blume’s books with distilling the values of the 1960s and ’70s sexual revolution for young readers, Bergstein celebrates the positive depictions of masturbation in Deenie and premarital sex in Forever for normalizing women’s pleasure. Bergstein tracks how Blume’s life has intersected with broader debates about women’s social status, noting that while Betty Friedan was writing about “housewives’ ennui” in the early 1960s, Blume had grown restless staying home to care for her own children and took up writing to stay occupied. Unfortunately, the cultural background sometimes overwhelms the ostensible focus on Blume, such as when Bergstein provides a lengthy account of a 1982 Supreme Court case over the legality of banning books from school libraries, even though Blume’s books hadn’t been challenged at the schools in question. (The frank discussions of sexuality in Blume’s books have made them a frequent target of other censorship campaigns, as Bergstein notes.) Still, Bergstein offers a thoughtful take on how Blume’s life and books translated for young people the gains of the women’s movement. Blume’s fans will treasure this. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office.
