This is one of those “I can’t believe you’ve never read that” books. How did I make it through my pre-teen years without this one? Well, I did. I was reminded about this one recently while searching for books that have been banned, and so decided to at last check it off my list.
Margaret is a pre-teen girl in late 60s New Jersey. She is settling in at a new school, and her gang of friends have a pact about puberty – they must exercise to grow their breasts (“we must, we must…”), they have to confess to their 6th grade crushes, and they have to tell the others when they first get their period. The girls are both knowledgeable and naïve about their own growing bodies. They know about the biology of menstruation, but still have a mythology about the experience. For most, their parents are open-minded post-60s liberals who retain a tinge of their own parents’ conservatism.
Margaret is raised without religion. Her parents – one Jewish, one Christian – have abstained from religious practice after their difficult experience getting married (the Christians disowned their daughter). They don’t forbid Margaret from exploring religions, and while they support her trying-on of a few different ones, they are unaware of her own individual relationship with God – her nightly conversations (the query in the book’s title) wherein she seeks growth and progress in her development as a woman.
It is these two points – frank presentation of menstruation as a female fact and open-mindedness about freedom of religion – that have resulted in the book being frequently challenged or banned (as recently as 2000-2009). Such concerns seem almost quaint these days. Likely more contemporary concerns would be the lack of diversity, including of Margaret’s religious explorations – she doesn’t try Buddhism or Islam (what she calls “Moslem”) because, “…I don’t know any people of these religions.”
The book was an enjoyable, light read, and I can imagine it as an engaging and provocative one for a pre-teen girl. It led to a few reminiscences for me of those middle school grades and all the social norms and structures that they involve – fitting in while also becoming an individual, silly fashion and group signals, and early interest in boys and sex. Sadly, I’m guessing that such innocent explorations and growth happen much earlier now for kids, and so this book will seem as much a throwback as Jane Austen to today’s youth.
Fate: little book library.
8 – female author
12 – a book I should read
14 – name in the title
35 – banned
rclr 
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