"Trying to find your identity and realizing that your society doesn't always tell you the right thing" is a particularly profound message for teens, Taylor says. Their teacher, Laurel Taylor, says that the story still resonates - and with students of all backgrounds. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., students of many different races and ethnicities are studying the book together. Today, in a 10th grade English class at T.C. Lee's story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus - a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape - came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation. Still, her influence has far outlasted most writers of her generation.įor the high-schoolers reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago. Lee stepped out of the limelight and stopped doing interviews years ago - and she never wrote another book. In 1961, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1962, it was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Click here to read an excerpt.įifty years ago, Harper Lee had the kind of success that most writers only dream about: Shortly after her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published on July 11, 1960, it hit the best-seller lists. The first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, was an immediate success.
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