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Susan Eloise Hinton Life Essay

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Susan Eloise Hinton, one of the world's most respected authors was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 22, 1950. Also known as S.E Hinton, best known for her young adult novels, especially The Outsiders. Antoine Wilson’sbiography The Library of Author Biographies: S.E Hinton highlights some of the problems Hinton endured on her path to become one of the most influential authors in America. Growing up in the 60’s wasn’t necessarily the easiest time for a young woman to publish books. While Hinton was growing up, women didn’t have as many rights or opportunities as they do today. Young women, and girls in particular, were expected to behave according to a set of expectations established by society at that time. The 60’s, known as a …show more content…

Nicole Marcuccilli highlights in her review that the biography is informative and easy to understand in her review. During Susan Eloise Hinton’s childhood, many factors influenced and sparked Hinton’s fascination with writing, both as hobby and as a way to escape her problems, but what inspired her the most were her father’s death and the lack of books that interested her. Even though Hinton has been writing novels since the third grade, Hinton claims to have started writing because she “Had read all the cowboy and horse books in the library” and “wanted something to read”(Wilson, 13). Hinton felt that there weren’t enough cowboy books that could satisfy her, so she decided to write them herself. Even though The Outsiders was Hinton’s first published work, it was actually her third novel, and the two previous novels were completely focused on cowboys and horses. Another main influence in Hinton’s passion for writing was her father’s death. During Hinton’s sophomore year in high school, as she began to write The Outsiders, meanwhile her father was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and later died in her junior year, around the time she was finishing the book. Hinton turned to writing her novels as a way of coping with her father’s death. During an interview, Hinton’s mother said: “Susie was very close to her father, and I noticed that the sicker he became, the harder she worked”(Wilson, 16). Her father’s death is also portrayed in The Outsiders

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