Judy Blume: 'I am very happy with my life'

The gentle, honest books of American writer Judy Blume are well-loved by many people who grew up in the '70s and '80s.

Now 85, Blume runs a non-profit bookshop in Key West, Florida with her husband George.

She spoke to RNZ about the new film version of her breakthrough novel, and the emotions her stories have stirred up in her readers.

Blume's breakthrough 1970 novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret has been adapted into a movie which premieres at the NZ International Film Festival next month.

Like the book's 11-year-old title character, she also had a very personal relationship with god as a child which involved "magical thinking" to keep her father safe.

When she was nine years old, Blume's family moved from New Jersey to Miami Beach, Florida, which the doctor said had a better climate for her brother's health. Her father, a dentist, stayed home to keep working and flew down as often as he could.

That same year, two of Blume's uncles, who were also partners in his dental practice, had died at just 43.

"I knew it was a bad year. And so it was up to me, in my magical thinking you know, to keep my father safe, healthy, okay. Because I adored my father, it was the parent, you know, that I just loved so much.

"So I made bargains with God, not unlike Margaret but a little more anxious. Because I had to make bargains with God about keeping my father safe. I had to be like 'I will get 100 on my spelling test if you keep daddy safe'. That's a real burden to take on when you're nine years old, you know, and it was magical thinking. I am just very lucky that after our two school years in Miami, we went back to New Jersey, resumed our life there, and I didn't have to do this anymore. What a relief."

Before living in Florida, Blume was "an anxious kid with eczema and a lot of fears". In the sunshine, she became more outgoing and much more interested in hanging out with friends.

"We were free-range kids so we could play outside until our parents called us in … That helped me, I think, changed me to become more self-reliant and much less fearful."

Blume met her first husband John M Blume at New York University and they had two children in the early '60s. 

As a "very new writer", Blume didnt anticipate that discussion of menstruation and religion in her breakthrough 1970 best-seller Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret would be so controversial.

"I didn't know anything about writing and I didn't know anyone who had ever written. And I was just sitting there. I had two very small children then and was writing what I wanted to write, something that I remembered as being true and honest.'

The feminist movement came late to suburban New Jersey, Blume says, but a few years later she chose to leave her marriage.

"I had never been on my own. I went from being a college girl... I was still in college when I got married, I was married at 21. Before that, I was, you know, my parents' little girl, and then suddenly I was married. And 16 years later, when I thought 'I'm ready, I have to [leave my husband]', it was very hard.

"I thought I can do this. I know I can do this. Because at that time, I thought I had raised these kids on my own, which wasn't really true. Even though I had a husband, he left the child-rearing to me. I thought 'I'll be I'll be able to do this'. Well, I stopped myself from falling apart completely and I picked up but I made some real mistakes along the way."

Blume guesses she would be a much better parent today:  "You get older and you realise so much more about life ... But I was young and I was playful. I think we had a good time."

It was her 14-year-old daughter Randy who first requested she write a book about two young people who have sex without any negative consequences. The result, published in 1975, was called Forever...

"My daughter asked for a book about two nice kids in high school who 'do it' as she put it, and nobody dies, nobody has to die. She was reading all these books where if a girl succumbed she would be punished … she would get pregnant, she would have a back alley abortion, she might die. Or she was sent away from home to Aunt Betty's house someplace else. And also girls weren't allowed, in books, to enjoy their sexuality. It was like this was something that boys could do, boys could enjoy sexuality. That's all they cared about. But girls? No, girls had to be punished for having any sexual feelings. I didn't think that was healthy. I certainly didn't want my daughter to grow up thinking that."

Over the years, Blume has received thousands of letters from young readers, but at one point realised that answering them was getting in the way of her writing. 

"There were some kids, you know, I just wanted to save them, I loved them so much. Some women, we corresponded for so long and they were wonderful writers, I guess. That's how they were able to make me care so deeply about them.

"They were needy, they were troubled, there was something going on where they really needed somebody. And it was easy to write to me because they didn't have to see me the next morning at the breakfast table, you know? … So I was safe. To get to me in those days, you had to write this longhand, you had to put it in an envelope and lick the envelope and close it and put a stamp on it and put it in a mailbox. It was so private and so personal, so different from today.

"Finally, I went to a therapist to help me be able to work again, and not feel that I was letting them down because I wanted to save some of them … I even had it in my head that if I could bring one of them to live with me, she would be okay. Well, what a joke … I mean, thank goodness, I didn't. And thank goodness this therapist helped me understand that the best thing I could do for these kids was just to be a supportive friend. You want to write to me? Does that make you feel better? Okay."

Women quite often cry when they meet Blume behind the counter in Books & Books, which she and George opened seven years ago

"And then, of course, I'll start crying too … I think it means I represent something to them about their childhood. But why do they still love the books that I wrote? I don't know."

She is very happy now. Partly that's thanks to her third husband George Cooper who, unlike her, is very laidback.

"He's a very easygoing person. I was once on a book tour in London and the young publicity person we were travelling with described Georged as "so laidback he's practically horizontal'. He's easy to live with, I think we complement each other.

"I am very happy with my life. Yeah, I'm incredibly lucky … I feel very, very lucky."

After completing her 2015 novel In the Unlikely Event, Blume decided 50 years of writing was enough, and says she's not tempted to write another book.

Shortly after, the opportunity to open a bookshop arrived like "a gift from the sky".

"Here's a space that should be a bookshop, do you want to make it into a bookshop? And it was 'yes, yes we do'. And I love it."

The documentary Judy Blume Forever is currently screening on Prime Video.