More than that: despite its age, The Outsiders continues to be a touchstone for adults who were born long after Hinton’s graduation from high school. Fifty years later, the book has sold upwards of 15 million copies, become a steady feature on middle school reading lists, inspired a Francis Ford Coppola film of the same name and helped shape an entire literary genre marketed to young adults. But it was a hit with teenagers across the country. Hinton’s novel, which describes in gritty detail the ongoing gang warfare between the lower-class Greasers and the well-to-do Socials, didn’t have much to do with romance or horses, unless you count her protagonist, the 14-year-old Greaser Ponyboy Curtis. “In the fiction they write, romance is still the most popular theme, with a horse-and-the-girl-who-loved-it coming in a close second.” “The authors of books for teen-agers are still 15 years behind the times,” she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times. Most of the literature handed down for high school students to read had, in Hinton’s estimation, nothing to do with the lived experiences of teenagers in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hinton published The Outsiders in 1967, a novel she began writing at age 15 and sold at 17, the idea of a teenager writing fiction for her peers was a novelty.
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