For me, it was a book called ‘The Outsiders’ by S.E Hinton. It is known as a literary classic these days, but it was quite hard hitting when it was released back in the 1960s.
In a nut shell; It is about a group of semi-impoverished greaser friends growing up in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, and all the life challenges they face, and how they react to prejudice against them whilst coping with family issues.
It was the first book that made me realise that some people in society don’t get it easy growing up, and I discovered what it meant to live on the ‘wrong side of town’ and what societal prejudice was. The outsiders was the first novel I read that brought up hard subjects like; domestic violence, alcoholism, street gang violence etc.
It was the first book to shatter my naive way of thinking about the world, at 13 years old! It is still one of my favourite stories to this day, and for all its slightly dark themes, I love the compassionate friendship and brotherhood that is displayed in this book!
When I was 9 my friend gave me a book she found at home that we both thought was about horses, called the valley of the horses.
It was not about horses. It was about a flowers of the attic level of unhinged (a separate encounter soon after). I had it in class with me that day, my homeroom teacher had a strange reaction but didn’t say anything. Honestly if she told me straight up that she thought it might not be appropriate it would’ve been for the best.
The change in viewpoint was – years of feeling like “I don’t wanna have a physical body much less grow up into someone at risk of pregnancy”
By Jean Auel?
Yup that one