Hi Joann,

To satisfy your curiosity... S.E. Hinton is happily married (to a man). They have one adult son together.

S.E. and I did talk about gender. She said, "I don’t think young women today understand how confining it used to be." She says growing up in Tulsa in the 50s and 60s, boys and girls did NOT hang out with each other unless they were dating. Meanwhile, S.E. hung out with her male cousins and their friends - hunting, fishing and playing football.

“When I was a kid, I thought I must think like a guy cause I’m not thinking like the girls are. Nothing they were doing made any sense to me. Like placing value on what kind of car their boyfriend drove. Like standing in the john for hours outlining their eyes. I didn’t want my boyfriend to have a car. I wanted a car. I used to think maybe I had a male mind, but I don’t think that any more. Because for one thing I don’t have refrigerator blindness. If I look in the fridge and want butter, I feel free to move the milk and there it is. It’s just that I couldn’t identify with anything in the female culture at that time. Now a days it’s easier to identify with women’s culture because it’s opened up so much, but it was such a box in those days. It was so confining. Extremely confining."

Thanks Kristi,

It was so fun to meet you and tell your story! If you are ever in New York, please drop me a line.

Lu

I also loved this book as a young teen. Now as a middle-aged dyke hearing the interview with SE Hinton, I had an insight into why I loved it so much. Like her (a lesbian? I know I can ask the interweb, but I won't, yet), I identified with the brotherhood of those boys, their sense of fealty to one another always stirred me. And when the movie came out and it was a block buster with all the young heart throbs, I wasn't into it. In my gut, i couldn't ride that hetero tide thought I read the book many times. The movie came out the year I came out! That was a time in my life when I wanted all the things boys had, independence and choices and strong brothers to fall back on. It's a baby dyke thing; ask Rachel Maddow, for pete's sake. SE Hinton was writing our fantasy life, even as she was writing what she lived and saw off her front porch.

I absolutely loved this book, and later, the movie. I first read it 3rd Grade on the recommendation of my teacher, and in many ways, it ignited my love of books because its world felt so touchable compared to the Chronicles of Narnia, our other reading recommendation. I loved the adult-less world they roamed about in, where the only refernce to adults was the ways in which the parents either abandoned them (death - the Curtis')or abused them (Johnny/Two-Bit). I went on to read S.E. Hinton's other books, Tex, Rumble Fish, That Was Then, This is Now, but nothing quite resounded with me the way the Outsiders did. I was too young to appreciate the homormonal impact of the movie, but I remember feeling like the Stevie Wonder song at the end of the movie was absolutely perfect.

The Outsiders gave me a private outlet for those emotions that I thought I wasn't supposed to feel. I bought this book as a teenager when the book mobile came to my middle school one year. I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to make the purchase, but it must have been some paranormal attraction. I never told anyone that I enjoyed it so much because boys of my age were supposed to read books about war or sports. Nor did anyone else talk about it with me, so I believed I was the only one who bought it or read it, and I cherished that belief. I read it every year during the summer and as I grew up with it, my love of the book likewise grew. I never identified with any of the characters, and I didn't really understand the setting or the era it portrayed. But it was the single most influential factor that got me through adolescence. When the movie was released, I was a bit surprised because I didn't think anyone else read that book. It belonged to me! But I watched it and was subsequently disappointed with the telling of the story, despite the star-packed cast. It was never going to match the movie my imagination created, and I wanted it to stay that way. I always credit this book for taking me to my emotional maturity, I thank Ms. Hinton for giving me this gift.

Thank you Lu for doing such an amazing job on this story! I am just as excited today as I was almost 30 years ago when I got to meet the whole cast and actually attend the premier of the movie in Fresno, Ca. I am blessed to have played a part in this awesome project. I love that Ralph Macchio still has the letter that we sent to Francis Ford Coppola. Would love to send S.E Hinton an email and tell her just how much I love her writting!

"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind:Paul Newman and a ride home."

Long before boys and Pac-Man, I realized the first obsession of my life as a 7th grader at Shaw Jr. High in Swampscott, MA. Once I read The Outsiders, I literally couldn't put it down. As soon as I read the last sentence of the book, I would immediately go back to page one and start reading it again. I know that I read it at least thirty times - maybe more. What a great, classic teen book. Today's show brought back great memories and my youth.

I had the opportunity to stage a performance of The Outsiders in my Junior High School "Creative Arts" class, as our big final play of the year. I was fortunate to be cast as Johnnycake. A lovely female friend of mine was cast as Ponyboy. We'd been friends already to some extent, but sharing the experience of rehearsing and become Johnny and Ponyboy together created a kind of bond that I still feel, half my life later. And I realize now that the entire experience brought the material to life for me in a way that I was maybe too young or too impatient to fully get on its own merits the first time (or first dozen times) I read the script or read the book or saw the movie. As Johnny, I wanted Ponyboy to like me. I yearned to be worthy, to be the kind of special guy to whom Ponyboy could tell about the sunrise and clouds and stuff. As a result, I think my eyes were opened through that experience, in that way that any young boy trying to find himself needs, especially a boy who has always lived on the outside. I think that S.E. Hinton shaped my world view in a great way, helped me to do my best to stay gold.

I taught middle school for 25 years and taught The Outsiders just about every one of those years and it never failed to work for my students. We read pre, during and post the movie version. It was the one title I new I could get them to go home on the weekend and finish without the threat of grades. There were years when I taught it to five classes a day of 7th or 8th graders, so I figure I have reread parts over 100 times. My 1970s undergraduate English major studies did not prepare me at all to teach YA novels, but they changed everything about the way I taught literature. My Outsiders-West Side Story-Romeo & Juliet unit ran all spring it seemed and students still tell me years later things they remember from those classes.

That was a GREAT story! Congrats to the producer.

Such a great book. That radio cast was great.

The first book that made me cry. So many wonderful memories associated with it. My friends and I were obsessed with the book and movies. S.E. Hinting is a pioneer in the genre of the young adult novel.