‘Forever’ Is Black and Nostalgic at the Same Damn Time

Mara Brock Akil reimagined a Judy Blume classic with Black characters, and the result is nothing short of stupendous.

Michael Cooper Jr. and Lovie Simone in “Forever.” (Photo by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Netflix)

When I was in sixth grade, my friends and I passed around a copy of Judy Blume’s Forever.

We’d marked all the pages that mentioned “Ralph.” We giggled about what we’d read at recess. We didn’t know enough to be anything more than a little scandalized at the fact that teenagers were having sex in a book.

It was so taboo, yet there was the book, in plain sight on a shelf in the library, right along with all the other Judy Blume books.

Maybe they thought it was safe because it was Judy Blume. The sex scenes weren’t explicit or nasty. They gave just enough detail for us to understand what was going on, but ultimately, the book wasn’t really about sex; it was about two teenagers who fall in love. Those teenagers just happen to have sex with each other in the story.

When I heard Netflix was adapting the book into a series and the main characters were going to be Black, I was intrigued.

As relatable as the topics in Judy Blume books were when I was younger, I did not see myself reflected in the characters, who were never Black.

This new version of Forever, envisioned by the always brilliant Mara Brock Akil — who gave us Girlfriends and Being Mary Jane — was going to give the story an entirely new life.

I binged the show in 24 hours, and I can say with certainty that as a Black Gen Xer, this series gave me an entirely new relationship with the source material. There were more than enough nods to the original Forever to feel nostalgic and enough original, Black storytelling to make it new, for us, by us.

I grew up reading Judy Blume books.