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For my son Curtis and his friends, who make me excited about the future

But here she had no children, no husband, and her mother was dead, no one was far weaker or far stronger than she, she carried her rage unknown, hidden, unknowable yet, she moved, slowly, under the arches, literally singing.

—SHARON OLDS, FROM “VISITING MY MOTHER’S COLLEGE”

The word police can fuck off.

—MADONNA

Timeline

1938—Judith Sussman was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey

1945—World War II ended

1956—Graduated from Battin High School

1959—Married John Blume

1961—Graduated from New York University; gave birth to Randy Blume

1963—Gave birth to Lawrence Blume; The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

1966—The National Organization for Women (NOW) formed

1967—Diary of a Mad Housewife by Sue Kaufman

1968—Richard Nixon was elected

1969—The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo

1970—Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Sexual Politics by Kate Millett; Women’s Strike for Equality

1971—Freckle Juice and Then Again, Maybe I Won’t

1972—It’s Not the End of the World and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

1973—Deenie; Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court; Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

1974—Blubber; Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal

1975—Divorced John Blume; Forever; the Vietnam War ended

1976—Married Tom Kitchens in England

1977—Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself; It’s OK If You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein

1978—Wifey

1979—Divorced Tom Kitchens

1980—Ronald Reagan was elected; Superfudge; met George Cooper

1981—Tiger Eyes

1983—Smart Women

1987—Married George Cooper; Just as Long as We’re Together

Preface

Judy Blume was my first.

She wasn’t the first author I fell in love with, but when I was nine years old, she pulled me across another major milestone—she wrote a book that I wanted to hide from my parents. Just as Long as We’re Together, about three middle school–aged best friends and their musical-chair friendship dynamics, started with a sentence so intoxicating it might as well have come with a chaser: Stephanie is into hunks. Was I into hunks? I wasn’t sure. But I knew that I couldn’t put the book down.

Stephanie’s parents were getting a divorce. My parents were divorced, too! Her body, like mine, was turning into something alien. Black fuzz was sprouting in not-altogether-welcome places, and I was transfixed as Stephanie described her own evolving figure, replete with belly rolls, jiggling “glutes,” and dark pubic hair.

My dad still read to me before bed at that age. But as soon as I got my hands on Just as Long as We’re Together, I asked him to stop. Stephanie’s world, filled with crushes, budding breasts, and pre-teen drama, wasn’t one I wanted to share with him. And so that night, I shuffled to his bedroom in pajamas and slippers and announced that I was going to read myself to sleep. I recognized his sadness as I kissed him good night, and I felt it, too. But it was worth it. Blume offered me something nobody else ever had before: a mirror of truth and a portal to some not-so-distant future, all wrapped in a humble paperback.

Judy Blume is more famous than she’s ever been since she started writing books for children in the late 1960s. She’s a star who has exploded into a supernova, with multiple film and television projects (A documentary! A movie version of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret! A Peacock series based on her 1998 novel Summer Sisters!). “The Judy Blume Renaissance is upon us,” the New York Times declared in March 2023. “We Need Judy Blume Now More Than Ever,” an April 2023 headline from the A.V. Club reads.

The latter referred to the post-Trump political climate, which has proven particularly favorable for book banners. To parental rights activists, a book like Gender Queer, a graphic novel by Maia Kobabe about adolescent gender dysmorphia, is “grooming,” making it the most-banned title of 2022, according to the American Library Association. All Boys Aren’t Blue, about author George M. Johnson’s experience growing up Black and queer in Plainfield, New Jersey, is “indoctrination” and was banned eighty-six times, per the same list. Republican-led state legislators in Florida, Texas, and Iowa are feverishly removing books from school library shelves, leaving them half-empty. Not since the Reagan years have the attacks on books been so organized, and so vicious.

We need Judy Blume now because she understands this moment better than anyone. She is rightly being recognized for all the brave choices she’s made in her long and celebrated career, from talking about periods in Are You There, God?, to having Deenie touch her “special place” in Deenie, to showing an eighteen-year-old losing her virginity—without suffering any hideous consequences—in Forever. Tackling these controversial subjects earned her a dubious honor: she was the country’s most-banned author in the 1980s, back when the Moral Majority was leading the charge against books the way the national right-wing group Moms for Liberty is driving efforts to remove books from school libraries today.

Blume is the grande dame of so-called dirty books. Her work, her voice, her face are all a comfort to the people who grew up with her, who watched her persevere against her attackers and go on to sell an astonishing ninety million copies of her novels to people around the world. Generations of readers are still rooting for her. Today, in her mid-eighties, she has graciously accepted her laurels and strolled into her role as a living legend.

I wanted to write this book to figure out why Judy Blume is still so beloved, when many of her contemporary young adult novelists, like Betty Miles and Norma Klein, have receded into history. I wanted to investigate why just the mention of Blume’s name is enough to break the ice with a stranger and get a serious, otherwise put-together adult woman giggling. Try it: say the name “Judy Blume” to the nearest Gen X or millennial book lover and see what happens. Is it a smile? A fast flush of joy? I’ve seen this look so many times since I started researching Blume’s life and work. A glimmer that floats across the eyes, almost like the person across from me is recalling a former flame.

What’s the secret ingredient that makes Judy Blume’s work so potent? The thing at the heart of her writing that makes it so sticky? Her name continues to show up in contemporary pop culture, in movies like Easy A (2010), Ted (2012), and Deadpool (2016). In interviews, Blume is consistent when she says that she wasn’t sitting down at her typewriter trying to be a firebrand; she just wanted to tell honest stories. But in doing so, she created a cohesive, culture-altering vision of modern childhood. In writing about kids from the inside out, she hit on crucial universalities that transcended race, class, and even sexual orientation. Young readers saw themselves in Judy Blume’s novels and felt she gave them permission to be truthful, too. More than truthful—to be complicated. In Blume’s world, children are expansive enough to question their relationships with God one night and then bicker over trivialities with their best friends on the bus the next morning. Middle school crushes are valid, and important! Nice girls are allowed to challenge their parents. They’re even allowed to criticize them.

This might not sound like a big deal now, but it was huge when Blume started writing in the late 1960s. Back then, children’s literature clung to the wisdom that mother and father knew best. One of the reasons I loved Just as Long as We’re Together so very much was that it validated my feelings. My parents divorced when I was five. Their split and subsequent remarriages had freaked me out and made me angry, but I held it all in. Unlike me, Stephanie expressed her displeasure with her mom and dad in all kinds of subtle and explicit ways. She was fundamentally a good kid—a doting older sister, a dedicated student—but she also wasn’t afraid to tell her parents exactly how upset she was about their breakup. I couldn’t imagine anything more delicious, or more deviant.

Judy Blume is special because she made young readers like me feel seen. That helps explain the nostalgia for her and her work, especially at a moment when the world—with a global pandemic, the existential threat of climate change, mounting combat overseas, and culture wars at home—feels so frightening. Blume’s universe, filled with bicycles, bras, and boy books, is much simpler.

Certainly, that’s part of the reason for the Blume-aissance. But it’s not the whole story.

The answer, I’ve come to believe, is sex. Sex is the lifeblood that flows through her pages. Not selling sex for titillation’s sake, the way her critics claimed, but sex as a fundamental part of being human. From Margaret Simon’s obsession with getting her period to Deenie Fenner’s curiosity about masturbation, the children in Blume’s stories all embrace puberty with open arms and take the ride into adulthood without shame. No matter how much they struggle, her adolescent characters are fundamentally empowered. Across Blume’s books, kids approach sex as a crucial part of growing up, a key element in their cultural and biological destinies.