A Reflection on the Famous “Banned Book”
The book, are you there God, it’s me, Margaret, has name recognition. It might be said to be an icon to my generation. Published in 1970, the book details the struggles of one 11 year old girl, Margaret Simon, who faces sixth grade and puberty as she moves from New York City to the suburbs in New Jersey. From this pedestrian beginning, the story cycles into questions of puberty, womanhood, parent’s rights, and religion.
We Must, We Must …
Mention this book to my friends of today and they remember. They remember in particular Margaret’s obsession with getting her period, and the iconic chant “we must we must we must improve our bust.” This chant was part of weekly club meetings for Margaret and her crew. Today, many can still do the exercise described, putting their hands forward and then pushing their elbows back, and jutting their chest forward, before collapsing into helpless laughter at the ridiculousness of it all.
We all know that the exercise doesn’t work, and if that doesn’t tell you something I don’t know what does.
Rereading Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret again this month, I come face to face with my earlier self, an experience that is not completely comfortable. It wasn’t comfortable when I was in 6th grade either. In 7th grade we had too had a club, the QT’s, and matching jackets. I was the last of our club to get my period. Maybe the last in the whole junior high school. Probably delayed by my excessive skinniness, my memory is that I got my first period when I was 15.
When All We Wanted Was to Grow Up
Thinking about it now, I can remember wanting so much to be a real woman too, to go through all the excitement of Real Life, which predominantly meant romance… and to be normal. These are the feelings that Blume has written of so vividly, and so economically. The book, a middle grade novel, runs only 171 pages. This is short for readers like me who back in that day read 500 page, small print books like Princess Daisy and Dress Gray without question.
Although Margaret is an East Coast girl, her culture is my culture. The intensive materialism of her home and school life is palpable. It was the same in my own home and school. The lack of religion is the same.
People In Her World Are So Insensitive …
Margaret develops a friendship with God. She talks to Him when she’s alone. But this God is not addressed in the way a religious God would be. He is kind of a big brother who may be in control of everything. But maybe not./
As the book moves forward, it becomes clear that Margaret’s God is a buffer against the slings and arrows of her problematic Fortune which includes the insensitivity of others:
- The sales lady who tells Margaret, the first time bra shopper “you go to the teen section that’s where they have the small sizes.”
- Her grandmother who tells her “you are a Jewish girl” as if the grandmother can force on to Margaret through bloodline heritage religious practices which she knows nothing of.
- The lies of Margaret’s friend Nancy who tells Margaret she got her period when she actually didn’t. And then tells stories about “Laura Danker who goes behind the A&P with boys.” Laura is a classmate of whom the girls are jealous because she has larger breasts. The stories aren’t true.
- A woman “with a big rear end” who comes to the school and shows a movie about menstruation and gives the girls some info on the topic … all, Margaret realizes, because she works for a sanitary napkin company which wants their business.
Perhaps God’s Silence Is An Upgrade
Perhaps with people surrounding her like these, God’s silence is an upgrade, yet Margaret telling God to make her grow “you know where” … it’s cringy. In fact most of the characters are cringy. Only the teacher, Mr Benedict, and Moose, Margaret’s crush, the 14-year-old who mows the lawn when her father is injured, are spared.
The Problematic Religion Project
As one proceeds into Chapter 5 we find Margaret entering a research project on religion. She visits services of the Jewish and Christian faiths and finds them insipid. She cannot listen during the sermon but counts ladies hats in different colors.
At the Christmas pageant at her school she juxtaposes Mary and Joseph finding the inn with a kindergarten child wedding his pants and the pee pooling on the floor.
Invited to a party at a classmate’s house, Margaret immediately decides to “wear her velvet” harking back to days when girls had fancy clothes. She looks at her body in the mirror, notices her lack of development, and then stuffs her bra with cotton balls.
Is It Really Okay With God to Stuff Your Bra?
By this time in the book I’m beginning to see the aspects of the story they caused it to be banned. The irreverent treatment of religion is the philosophical challenge, though the discussions of puberty drive the matter along. Perhaps it’s true that the idea that God is with you in such problems as wanting to grow up and being unable to hurry the process is uncomfortable for some. Some of the monologues that Margaret addresses to God are decidedly strange, at least to an outsider who isn’t really “in” on the relationship they have.
After stuffing her bra she tells Him: “Are you still there God? See how nice my bra looks now? That’s all I need, just a little help. I’ll be really good around the house God. I’ll clear the table every night for a month at least! Please God…”
Of the religious services, the dimwitted parents, the prayers which are Margaret addresses to God, and about the ‘we must we must’ routine, a picture of a real, frighteningly materialistic existence emerges. I think more than anything banal materialism is the enemy of the people in the story. It’s an enemy that they don’t recognize. Yet it surrounds every facet of the story from the new choir robes the students wear and the mothers fastidiously press, to the description of pubic hair and underwear, to Margaret’s mom’s new car which is green. The baldness of the book’s approach to puberty, devoid of beauty, mystery, or God forbid compassion (Margaret’s mother is remarkably matter of fact and somewhat clueless) is a simultaneous validation and deconstruction of both cynicism and materialism.
The World of Margaret Is A Tough Place To Find God
The world of Margaret is a world without majesty, magic or miracles. This is why the new car Margaret’s mother buys is described simply as green. Even a new car, which should get, say, at least a paragraph? gets one line.
A philosophical crisis appears when her capable and caring teacher Mr Benedict assigns the students a personal project. Margaret chooses finding her religion. She then asks God to help her choose a religion.
She has put God on the spot and the savvy reader will see that
- If God responds well and good but
- If not, either:
- A. There is no God
- B. There is no utility in practicing religion
- Or, perhaps C. God cannot make this choice for you
- Or D. Eleven years of age is not the time to choose a religion for yourself.
Since ultimately God is silent in the story, the average preteen reader might not pick up the subtlety to see choice C or D and may just assume that there is no God … or that he doesn’t care if you practice religion.
Who Needs Religion? Who Needs God?
And now you see how the book got banned. This is the kind of thing that book banning types don’t like.
Especially when at the end Margaret declares “Who needs religion? Who? Not me! I don’t need it I don’t even need God!”
Her declaration is prompted by her grandmother’s insistence that she choose a religious faith … and perhaps by her continuing not getting her period.
The now 12-year-old, with these words, shuts out two generations of elders. It’s a prime moment, taken to heart by Gen X and Baby Boomers alike. The youth have the power to put a stop to a world that doesn’t work for them. It’s not surprising that someone who desired to preserve that world wanted to put a stop to the book.
The fact that Margaret ultimately went back and began speaking to God again does not soften the rhetorical blow of this idea that God is not really there, that we may have created him out of our need. And that biology is our only truly trustworthy destiny.
Finishing the book gave me pause. I remembered feeling a little uncomfortable about this book when I read it at age ten or eleven. I remember feeling that Margaret’s connection with God was weird and tenuous and that the book seem to be going somewhere I didn’t understand.
How to Become a Many-Times Banned Book
Reflecting on the fact that Are You There God It’s Me Margaret was removed from school shelves repeatedly, all over the country, I had to admit that some parts of the book made me a little irritated, as a religious person, but it didn’t seem like a book that was too … anything … for upper elementary students. Who exactly *were* the parents and community members who asked the book be banned and why exactly were they getting upset?
I began on a study of what gets books banned.
On the question of why Are you there God it’s me Margaret the book was banned, I find an article in Woman and Home that says for portrayal of menstruation and a girl picking her own religion. Okay, points for succinctness but I’m going to need more than that.
Looking at NPR I find a similar description in an article that complains about modern efforts to censor the book, saying “girls in Florida right now can’t even ask about menstruation to their teachers.”
And as I read on I find a story about how in Burbank, California, classic novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn were banned recently because of their racist language.
California has recently banned book bans and textbook censorship in schools. I’m not sure where that leaves Burbank.
On The Trail of the Censors
All this finally brought me to a mention of an article called “How to rid your schools of Judy Blume” by Phyllis Schlafly. However I was not able to find the actual article on Schlafly’s website the Eagle Forum. The writing on the Eagle forum made me uncomfortable. It was tendentious, judgemental. Self-righteous. I wondered why they took the article about banning Judy Blume’s work down. Most writers, when they’ve written something important in the national discourse, keep it available out of a sense of pride. But this essay was gone. Mystery.
I know that in Florida, at least, questions of parental rights play into book banning. This book doesn’t seem extreme enough to me to trigger a debate. But perhaps its attractiveness and widespread popularity — remember how all my friends remembered it clearly — made it a target.
Why Do We Read Books Anyway?
The question of book banning cuts to the question of why we read literature. It was Aristotle who said literature was used to delight and instruct. It is that second characteristic of literature which is causes the desire to ban books, since if books can teach us how to live well, they can also teach us how to live poorly. Bad teaching is an ever present issue in societies of all stripes.
Still, the hatred and banning directed at Judy Blume seems extreme. I find myself, closing up this book, wondering why we can’t as a society come to some agreements. The efforts to ban Are you there, God seem poorly thought out to me. I admit to finding some aspects of the book irreverent, however, that’s basically what my dad used to call ‘small potatoes.’ Since that time I’ve seen books designed for children that struck me as scarcely appropriate and in fact explicitly sexual.
Different Types of Book Bans
It seems to me there are two different types of book banning. One, book banning for adults, and another, book banning for children. We have largely decided that there will be no book banning or media banning of any type in this country for adults. But the question of whether children should have unrestricted access to every book remains. Particularly in schools.
As the New York Times notes, now, with the polarized political situation, Book Bans Spread Across the U.S.
Reading more on the subject I try to imagine what is driving this book banning resurgence. Why are the parents so angry. And then I uncover this thought. Exposing children to pornography is considered child abuse. The problem here is that the question of what pornography is is a gray area. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I’m pretty sure that some mothers would consider some of the young adult books I’ve read to be pornographic, at least if they were offered to 11 year olds. Are we just to call these mothers (and fathers) hysterical prudes? This is to invite a pushback to say the least.
Is It Possible to Go Too Far With Children’s Literature?
But as I read more about censorship, I see that PEN America does not see that there is any potential benefit in restricting literature access for minors. And I know many people who feel this way, having been in various writer’s forms over the years. I think there’s a problem in that they don’t see that with regard to minors, there is a line where explicit content is too much.
I did not spend much time worrying about what my children were reading. But that was me. It could be seen as a privacy violation to overrule a parent’s directives about what their child can do, on a number of levels. Including reading books. Thus the book banning frenzy.
In truth, having spent a lot of time in children’s literature sections of the library, I find myself unable to dismiss out of hand the concerns of those who say some of the literature we offer to children has become risque’.
The Good of Children is Paramount
I’m reminded of the story I remember from when my children were young of a 7-year-old pilot, Jessica Whitney Dubroff, flying an airplane across the country in 1996. This was in all the newspapers and the child was thought of as a hero for being so brave and independent.
The story ended tragically when she died in a airplane crash in Cheyenne Wyoming The Federal Aviation Administration cracked down on youth pilots, and made rules that all pilots must be 16 and pass a medical exam.
I think it is worth remembering the story. I have seen, over the years, that there are some parents who wish to rush their children into adult situations and adult ideas. When I was young it was common for parents to provide teenaged children alcohol. They were “the cool parents.” But this drinking, over the years of my high school life, resulted in four alcohol-related fatal car crashes. Since that time, people have become more careful with drinking and driving and giving alcohol to teenagers. It’s dangerous.
And I think this movement to open all literature covering all kinds of rated R or X topics to young children deserves more reflection then Pen America is giving. Certainly no one wants to restrict access to knowledge. But we are not being honest if we think very young children can healthfully process everything the printed page can print out. We hold our children’s hands when they cross the street. Of course, you try to get them the best books to learn to read with. Wanting to protect them is not wrong.
Despite The Caveats, I Vote for Margaret and Her Story
I would describe Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret, as more moments of cringiness than anything else and I can’t really imagine even now how people disliked it enough to try to get it banned. Perhaps the banners were triggered by the light-hearted attitude about some pretty serious subjects. But using this old favorite book as an example to show that book banners are always wrong seems unfair to me. So many people have enjoyed this book and I can’t imagine seeing it banned in school libraries. I guess what I’m saying is, although I hedge and say that I am not willing to say that there are no books that don’t belong in schools, this book unequivocally does.
The amount of reflection I’ve gotten about it is the reason why we call some books literature. Along with an elegance of construction, a flow of thought and a clarity of character. I don’t have to like Are You There, God, exactly, to argue that it has merit. And book banners should leave it alone for sure, because it’s an argument *against* book banning, as it stands.
