“You can’t go back to holding hands.” Reading Judy Blume’s Forever in the #MeToo Era

Judy Blume’s Forever is a cultural artifact that gives readers a historical look at society’s attitudes about sex and sexuality at the time of publication in 1975. However, in the #MeToo era, Blume’s text is poised for new analysis in light of important conversations and concerns about sex, sexuality, and consent. In this article, Critical Youth Studies and Queer Theory are used to explore the ways in which young readers can critically engage with Blume’s novel and questions about virginity, sex, sexuality, and consent associated with the #MeToo movement.

Literature Review and Background

The youth’s narratives can add depth to many literatures, and chapter one reviews some of the core assumptions within the fields of youth violence, critical youth studies, and punishment in the juvenile justice system and schools. Chapter one also includes a brief review of the colonial history of Hawai‘i.

Theoretical Conclusions

Chapter eight showcases our theoretical interpretations of our findings reviewed in chapters three through seven. Featuring racial and gender inequalities, which we call the system of colonial patriarchy, we fill gaps in youth violence perspectives, interlocking inequalities perspectives of youth, and assumptions within the field of critical youth studies. We offer a theory of colonial patriarchy to explain youth violence, and we suggest how a colonial patriarchy lens can expand theories of punishment in the U.S.