Are You There God It’s Me Margaret – Review

A Reflection on the Famous “Banned Book”

The book, are you there God, it’s me, Margaret, 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 autonomy, womanhood, parent’s rights, and religion. It is a book famous both for being loved, and for being banned. I came back to it wondering what had been said to drive these two responses. 

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” even thought her mother is not Jewish, as if the grandmother can force Margaret, through bloodline heritage, to adopt 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. 
• 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, the idea that God is with you, even in such problems as wanting to grow up and being unable to hurry the process,  could be 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 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.

God is silent in the story. Thus, 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 to not get 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 fact that Margaret ultimately went back and began speaking to God again does not soften the 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 seemed to be going somewhere I didn’t understand.

Nevertheless, 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.  I guess what I’m saying is, although I hedge and say that I am not willing to say that there are books that don’t belong in schools, this book isn’t one of them. 

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.