Lecturer II, English & Sweetland Center for Writing
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About
"Nothing Gold Can Stay In Middle School: Reading S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders in 2024"
Nothing Gold Can Stay In Middle School: Reading S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders in 2024 is both a literary analysis of Hinton's beloved text and a personal account of my experience re-reading it alongside a beloved, precocious, teenaged interlocutor. Reading The Outsiders alongside my eighth-grade son pushed me to investigate what seemed to be the near-universal appreciation of this novel, as both a pedagogical mainstay of the middle school canon and a pop culture favorite. I write to discover how and why this novel's enthusiastic readers often turn to various notions of authenticity to account for its enduring value. What does the persistence of such a standard say about the place of reading in American public schools and in the everyday lives of young readers? What does authenticity even mean for readers like my son and his peers, whose life experiences are far from Hinton's characters, and whose reading preferences tend more toward worldbuilding than real world? This long-form essay is intended as part of a larger series of essays about reading young adult "classics," whether cult, pedagogical, emerging, or otherwise.
Angela Berkley is a Lecturer II, English & Sweetland Center for Writing.
