Jesus and Judy Blume

This is an excerpt from a new essay I'm working on, entitled "Bibliography of the Damned."

(It's supposed to be in the form of an annotated bibliography, but Blogger keeps messing up my MLA format. So just picture where the margins and indents should be.)



Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. New York: Dell, 1986. Print.


It was the first time I had heard of a book being a secret thing, a dangerous thing. Up until then it seemed like all anyone wanted us to do was read—at home, at school, at church, everywhere. Billboards and public service announcements showed clean-cut, smiling children engrossed in books. Now all the girls were reading this novel, passing it around, and it was scandalous. It was the Lady Chatterley’s Lover of the fifth grade.

I wanted to read it, too. I’d heard that it talked about periods, a subject I desperately wanted to understand, since all I knew was that they were a curse brought on by Eve. But I couldn’t get past the first part of the title: “Are You There God?” How could anyone ask such a question? Of course God was there; as a good Southern Baptist girl, I knew this to be true. I had been saved when I was eight, after a Bible study teacher explained how if you didn’t place your faith in Jesus’ resurrection, you went to Hell, where you would be on fire forever, without ever burning up. That got my attention, since fire was one of my worst fears. I wouldn’t touch matches until I was thirteen. Who was this Judy Blume, then, to challenge the creator of the universe right there in her title?

My curiosity won out, though, and I read the first few pages. The basic plot concerns Margaret talking to God every day, even though her parents don’t belong to any religion. Good for her, I thought. Maybe this book wasn’t so bad after all. Then I read some of the things she was praying for: “I just told my mother I want a bra. Please help me grow God. You know where.” That was too much. Listen, Missy, Jesus didn’t come back from the dead just so you could get boobs. I put the book away and never finished it.