Emily Bazelon talks with journalist Mark Oppenheimer about his new book
Judy Blume: A Life. Oppenheimer, who spent years with Blume’s papers at
Yale and conducted extensive interviews with the author herself, traces
how a restless housewife in New Jersey became one of the most
beloved—and most banned—writers in American history.
They discuss what made Blume’s frank, funny voice so revolutionary for
young readers in the 1970s, the surprisingly progressive household that
shaped her, and the genius of Forever, her landmark novel in which
teenage sex is depicted as pleasurable rather than catastrophic. They
also dig into the scandalous adult novel Wifey, Blume’s dogged
persistence through rejection, and her tireless championing of other
writers’ right to be read.
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Podcast production by Nina Porzucki.