Judy Blume's Legacy and Bridging the Adolescent Gap
The Story
Judy Blume achieved major Hollywood success at age 85 with a film adaptation of her 1970 coming of age novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, starring Abby Ryder Fortson as a young girl from a mixed faith family who moves from New York City to suburban New Jersey.
Born in 1938 and raised in New Jersey, Blume graduated from NYU in 1961 with an education degree, published her first book in 1969, and has since written more than 25 novels that sold roughly 90 million copies worldwide.
She became one of the most widely banned authors in American history, with five of her novels appearing on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most banned books of the 1990s, including Forever, censored in 1975 for depicting teen sex and birth control, and Deenie, challenged in 1973 for passages about masturbation.
Blume wrote candidly about menstruation, sexuality, and adolescent anxiety at a time when such subjects were considered off limits for young readers, making her books a covert lifeline for generations.
Speaking to BBC One, she argued that intolerance around gender, sexuality, and race is worse than it was in the 1980s and urged people to stand up and fight back.
She told the New York Times that her deepest ambition was simply to have touched lives, a goal one critic said she met by shaping the minds of millions.
Born in 1938 and raised in New Jersey, Blume graduated from NYU in 1961 with an education degree, published her first book in 1969, and has since written more than 25 novels that sold roughly 90 million copies worldwide.
She became one of the most widely banned authors in American history, with five of her novels appearing on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most banned books of the 1990s, including Forever, censored in 1975 for depicting teen sex and birth control, and Deenie, challenged in 1973 for passages about masturbation.
Blume wrote candidly about menstruation, sexuality, and adolescent anxiety at a time when such subjects were considered off limits for young readers, making her books a covert lifeline for generations.
Speaking to BBC One, she argued that intolerance around gender, sexuality, and race is worse than it was in the 1980s and urged people to stand up and fight back.
She told the New York Times that her deepest ambition was simply to have touched lives, a goal one critic said she met by shaping the minds of millions.
Why It Matters
Blume has said the writing is over, and the machinery that keeps her in print now runs without her. She told NPR in May, a decade past her last novel, that "50 years is enough," and spends her days at the register of her Key West bookstore. The books still need defending: the American Library Association counted 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, five short of its record, with nearly 92 percent of attempts driven by pressure groups. Forever, the 1975 novel censored for teen sex, is now a Netflix series that began filming a second season of eight episodes in Los Angeles in May, per Deadline; watch for a premiere date when Netflix sets one.
Go Deeper
Read the original reporting at The Week.
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