How “The Outsiders” Became the Origin of YA Literature

7 min readMay 2, 2022

Greaser Day at my middle school was a whole event. Kids across the eighth grade, fresh from having read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, would don clean white t-shirts and bandana hair-ties for the Socs or flannels and jean jackets for the Greasers. When I was shadowing my former eighth grade English teacher for my senior-year career study, I got to participate in Greaser day again — I cut the sleeves off an old flannel shirt, layered it with my denim vest covered in pins. We spent class time outside playing games, and I have pictures of every class in their Outsiders costumes.

Although our peer divide was a fun costume for a day of lazing away in English class, we reflected the very real rivalry between students at Will Rogers High School — the point of inspiration for The Outsiders in 1960s Oklahoma.

S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders follows Ponyboy, one of the youngest boys in a group of Greasers — lower-class delinquents that often clash with the Socs (short for “socials”), a group of upper-class troublemakers. After a deadly run-in with a Soc, Ponyboy and his friend Johnny Cade hide away in an abandoned church, and come to reckon with what life on the wrong side of the law really means for them and how they can still find good in the world.

The Outsiders has become a classic in just the few decades since its release. A 1983 film adaptation cemented it within the literary and film canon, starring actors such as Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, and Patrick Swayze. From Rolling Stone, on the longevity of The Outsiders:

“For proof, just look at the long tail of the phrase “Stay gold, Ponyboy.” In The Outsiders, those are the dying words of Greaser Johnny Cade, itself a half-remembered quote from the Robert Frost poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” In 2017, “Stay Gold” is a phrase you can find emblazoned on everything from T-shirts to throw pillows. It’s the title of an entire album by Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit and a song by Run the Jewels. Though the era of Socs and Greasers has long past, the adolescent dynamic Hinton picked up on remains, even though the name of the groups changes.”

The Outsiders became a landmark for young adult (YA) literature, a category that had only existed for a decade or two before its debut.

The YA category began to rise in popularity with the true beginning of American youth culture; by the 1930s and ’40s, older kids were given the designation “teenagers”, and media for young people became culturally relevant. Youth were attending high school in droves due to the drying-up of the job market caused by the Great Depression, jumping up by twenty-five percent in just one decade. The phrase “young adult” first came to print in September 1941 in an issue of Popular Science magazine.

It took a long while for educators to take on young adult literature, due in part to looming threats from administrators and parents. Selected books for teenagers were few and far between, with notable picks like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series.

Through the 1940s and ’50s, teenagers were lacking in literature that reflected their experience (cultural, social, and psychological) — and these failings were recognized by the Young Adult Services Division. Teenagers were co-opting adult literature to suit their own needs, taking on books such as The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Wrinkle in Time.

The Young Adult Library Services Association coined the term “young adult” in the ’60s to represent the 12-to-18-year-old readership. It became common in libraries, but new reservations about young adult literature began to arise. Hesitancy arose around new titles that threatened to “defy” society. This trend became known as “new realism”, with novels like The Outsiders offering the challenge to students to critically examine the assumptions, both overt and covert, made within society.

What brings The Outsiders to the forefront of the YA category is the unflinching view of life as a teenager in America. Author S.E. Hinton criticized the popularized genre fiction and serial novels for YA readers as having plot like “Mary Janes goes to prom”. Her goal was to write for the everyday teenager, the teenagers who rebel, who smoke, drink, and fight. Hinton herself was in high school while drafting the novel, and eighteen years old when it was published.

In doing so, Hinton took the influences that teenagers took to, along with some classic works of literature, and “[re-translated]” them through the perspective of a teenager. With work made specifically for America’s youth, Hinton proved that there was a real market for literature about the teenage experience. The Outsiders portrays the adolescent experience of existing in a society where the failings of adults are becoming evident but without knowing how to fix them, and coming to understand that the divides between people are only imposed by that society.

The Outsiders and other novels that work to communicate the teenage experience then led the charge for the YA category. These novels, however, slowly became “single-problem” novels, and their formulaic structure began to fall out of favor. Genre fiction crept back into the category, such as R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series, alongside teen dramas like Sweet Valley High. The era of these early YA books became known as the First Golden Age.

The YA canon was established in the 1980s, with Linda Bachelder and colleagues publishing a list through the National Council of Teachers of English — their selections included Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War and Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Establishing this canon legitimized this category and the readership of young people by comparing these novels to “classic” authors. Interrogating these works of literature also validated the category, as many critics had assumed that these novels were solely formulaic. What became clear was that YA literature offered exploration of not only the general teenage experience, but of “the territory of female imagination”.

The low birth rates in the mid-1970s meant that there were fewer teenagers to consume young adult literature in the 80s and 90s. The category adapted, and books for tweens and middle-schoolers gained popularity.

With another baby boom coming along in 1992, the Second Golden Age of YA literature bloomed in the 2000s. The teenage population — between twelve and nineteen years of age — grew by 17 percent, outpacing the growth of the rest of the population. The definition of “young adult” grew to include readers as young as ten and as old as twenty-five (as of the late 1990s). YA fiction today is a force in the book industry, with children’s and YA books gaining 22.4 percent of sales in 2014. And, just as picture books are meant to entice adult readers as well, YA does the same, with 55 percent of YA novels being purchased by adults

So what does YA look like today?

First, it’s important to establish that YA is not a genre of literature, but a category. YA spans all kinds of writing across both fiction and nonfiction. Many authors take the opportunity to blend genres, such as fantasy and romance, creating a diverse canon of books within the category.

Marketing directly to teenagers didn’t pick up until the 2000s; young adult sections popped up in libraries and bookstores, and youth were encouraged to discover what the category had to offer. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series opened up YA to fantasy novels, from dystopian fiction like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. YA literature saw a boom in popularity that would shape the perception of the category for the following decade.

Teenage readers flocked to these stories, the paranormal and the dystopian, like the industry hadn’t seen before. And why the popularity of these titles? Teenagers relate to the supernatural — From YA author, Ph.D, and cognitive science scholar Jennifer Lynn Barnes:

Teens are caught between two worlds, childhood and adulthood, and in YA, they can navigate those two worlds and sometimes dualities of other worlds.”

In response to these series of paranormal/dystopian YA books (most often found in trilogies), standalone books have seen a revitalization post-2010s. Now more common, authors do still keep on Hinton’s track writing about the issues of today’s teenagers, with novelists like John Green gaining a devoted readership through his depictions of the highs and lows of young adulthood. Topics like mental health, gender and sexualty, and race and class are all considered incredibly important when it comes to YA.

Although in my research I’ve found that there’s still a bit of debate as to whether or not The Outsiders is the true origin point of YA literature, I think it’s a fantastic example of what we’ve come to know YA to be. Hinton crafts an endearing tale about a teenager dealing with an unimaginable burden in a society that constantly pits him against his peers — but even so, narrator Ponyboy remains grounded, and talks openly about his feelings and relationships. Yes, he’s a gangster and yes, he comes from a ragtag family, but he really isn’t too far removed from any experiences that today’s teens might go through. Ponyboy’s voice is genuine because Hinton was coming from the same place — and that genuine quality is all YA readers are really searching for.

Curious to learn more about the origin of YA literature? Check out…

How “The Outsiders” Became the Origin of YA Literature

Written by Jude August