Judy Blume on Sex, Her New Book, And A Long-Kept Secret

Judy Blume Image by Getty Images
Judy Blume taught countless little girls about sex. But who taught Judy Blume?
At BookCon to promote her new book,”In The Unlikely Event,” — the first one geared to adults in nearly 16 years — the author gave a little insight of what it was like to grow up as a tween without the comfort of Judy Blume books. “Well, we didn’t have YA growing up,” Blume who asked her how she coped. “So I went right to my parents’ bookshelves. I found a lot of satisfaction in adult books.”
In a special interview with Jennifer Weiner, the 77-year old also shared some high school-era regrets with the audience.
Per Vulture:
“I was very active,” she said (intending no innuendo). Indeed, she was in the “advanced glee club.” But she noticed at the time that no African-American girls ever seemed to make the cut. At Blume’s 40-year high-school reunion, she decided to stand up and unburden herself of a secret guilt: She remembered seeing the glee-club teacher’s list of applicants, with a big C written beside the names of all the black girls. “I felt so terribly guilty,” she said, eyes welling up. “Why didn’t anyone say something? Afterward, a couple of girls came up to me and said, ‘We never knew that you knew.’ And that was very heavy and wonderful — a cathartic moment.”
Blume added that she had originally included the incident in her novel, which comes out Tuesday, but decided to cut it because it interfered with narrative flow. “In The Unlikely Event” revolves around three plane crashes in Blume’s hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, near Newark airport.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
- 4
Opinion Mike Huckabee said there’s ‘no such thing as a Palestinian.’ It’s worth thinking about what that means
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
-
Fast Forward Yarden Bibas says ‘I am here because of Trump’ and pleads with him to stop the Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Trump’s plan to enlist Elon Musk began at Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave
-
Film & TV In this Jewish family, everybody needs therapy — especially the therapists themselves
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.