The Freedom Writers Diary

Last updated
The Writers Diary of freedom
Freedomdiarybookcover.jpg
AuthorThe Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell
LanguageEnglish
SubjectLife Stories
Genre Non-fiction
PublisherTyrell Wickoson
Publication date
1999
Publication placeUnited States
Pages277pp
Preceded byThose Lips 
Followed byThis Media 

The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them is a non-fiction 1999 book written by The Freedom Writers, a group of students from Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, and their teacher Erin Gruwell. It is the basis of the 2007 movie Freedom Writers , starring Hilary Swank.

Contents

The Freedom Writers Diary was made up of journals that Erin Gruwell told her students to write in about the troubles of their past, present and future. The Freedom Writers name pays homage to the name of the 1960s civil rights group Freedom Riders.

After intercepting a racist drawing from one of her students, Gruwell compared the drawings to Nazi propaganda techniques. She drew blank stares; only one of them had heard of the Holocaust. As a result, she assigned them to read and write about the posthumously published 1947 book The Diary of Anne Frank (written between 1942 and 1944) and the 1992–93 non-fiction book by Zlata Filipović, Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo . [1]

The Freedom Writers Foundation continued with exercises and philosophies similar to those used in the original class, and tracks the progress of the original and continuing classes.

Plot summary

As an idealistic 23-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of "unteachable, at-risk" students. One day she intercepted a note with a racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust – only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels between these books and their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the "Freedom Writers" in homage to the civil rights activists "The Freedom Riders".

With funds raised by a "Read-a-thon for Tolerance", they arranged for Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California during the 1994/1995 school year, where she declared that Erin Gruwell's students were "the real heroes." Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognition – appearances on Primetime Live and All Things Considered , coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley – and educational benefit. All 150 Freedom Writers graduated from high school and many went on to attend college.

Banning of the book in schools

On March 11, 2008, an English teacher at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, Connie Heermann, was suspended for a year and a half without pay for using the Freedom Writers Diary in her classroom against the wishes of the school board. [2] [3] Administrators objected to racial slurs and sexual content in portions of the book. [4]

In March 2023, the book was removed from public school libraries in Martin County, Florida. [5]

In June 2023, Utah State Senator John D. Johnson called the book pornographic and said that high schools are committing the felony of "accessory to the distribution of pornography to minors" if they have the book available to students. [6]

In 2024 the book was banned in Texas by the Katy Independent School District on the basis that the novel is "adopting, supporting, or promoting gender fluidity" [7] despite also pronouncing a bullying policy that protects infringements on the rights of the student. [8]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<i>Oryx and Crake</i> 2003 novel by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is a 2003 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and adventure romance, rather than pure science fiction, because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do", yet goes beyond the amount of realism she associates with the novel form. It focuses on a lone character called Snowman, who finds himself in a bleak situation with only creatures called Crakers to keep him company. The reader learns of his past, as a boy called Jimmy, and of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering that occurred under the purview of Jimmy's peer, Glenn "Crake".

<i>Speak</i> (Anderson novel) 1999 novel by Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak, published in 1999, is a young adult novel by Laurie Halse Anderson that tells the story of high school freshman Melinda Sordino. After Melinda is raped at an end of summer party, she calls the police, who break up the party. Melinda is then ostracized by her peers because she will not say why she called the police. Unable to verbalize what happened, Melinda nearly stops speaking altogether, expressing her voice through the art she produces for Mr. Freeman's class. This expression slowly helps Melinda acknowledge what happened, face her problems, and recreate her identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Tolerance</span> Holocaust memorials, racism and prejudice museum in California, United States

The Museum of Tolerance (MOT), also known as Beit HaShoah, is a multimedia museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, designed to examine racism and prejudice around the world with a strong focus on the history of the Holocaust. The museum was established in 1993, as the educational arm of human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The museum also deals with atrocities in Cambodia and Latin America, along with issues like bullying and hate crimes. The museum has an associated museum and professional development multi-media training facility in New York City.

<i>The Diary of a Young Girl</i> Diary by Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl, commonly referred to as The Diary of Anne Frank, is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Anne's diaries were retrieved by Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. Miep gave them to Anne's father, Otto Frank, the family's only survivor, just after the Second World War was over.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katy Independent School District</span> School district in Texas, United States

The Katy Independent School District (KISD) is a public school district based in Katy, Texas, United States with an enrollment of over 85,700 students. In 2022, the district was given a grade of "A" by the Texas Education Agency.

<i>Looking for Alaska</i> 2005 novel by John Green

Looking for Alaska is a 2005 young adult novel by American author John Green. Based on his time at Indian Springs School, Green wrote the novel as a result of his desire to create meaningful young adult fiction. The characters and events of the plot are grounded in Green's life, while the story itself is fictional.

Zlata Filipović is a Bosnian-Irish diarist. She kept a diary from 1991 to 1993 when she was a child living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, later published as a book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural depictions of Anne Frank</span>

The following lists some references to the Holocaust-era Jewish diarist Anne Frank in popular culture.

<i>Freedom Writers</i> 2007 American drama film by Richard LaGravenese

Freedom Writers is a 2007 American biographical drama film written and directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Hilary Swank, Scott Glenn, Imelda Staunton, Patrick Dempsey and Mario.

Freedom Writers is a 2007 American film.

The Freedom Writers Foundation is a non-profit organization created to "inspire young, underprivileged students to pick up pens instead of guns." It was founded by Erin Gruwell, and John Tu is a benefactor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erin Gruwell</span> American teacher (born 1969)

Erin Gruwell is an American teacher known for her unique teaching method, which led to the publication of The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them (1999). The 2007 film Freedom Writers and the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart are based on her story.

<i>Nineteen Minutes</i> 2007 novel by Jodi Picoult

Nineteen Minutes (2007) is the fourteenth novel by the American author Jodi Picoult. It was Picoult's first book to debut at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. This novel follows the unfolding of a school shooting, including the events leading up to the incident and the aftermath of the incident.

<i>Skin & Bones</i> (novel) Book by Franklin W. Dixon

Skin & Bones is a book in the Hardy Boys series. It was first published in 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nazi book burnings</span> 1930s campaign to destroy prohibited literature and research in Nazi Germany and Austria

The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union to ceremonially burn books in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism. These included books written by Jewish, half-Jewish, communist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, pacifist, and sexologist authors among others. The initial books burned were those of Karl Marx and Karl Kautsky, but came to include very many authors, including Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, writers in French and English, and effectively any book incompatible with Nazi ideology. In a campaign of cultural genocide, books were also burned en masse by the Nazis in occupied territories, such as in Poland.

<i>The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian</i> 2007 novel by Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a first-person narrative novel by Sherman Alexie, from the perspective of a Native American teenager, Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior," a 14-year-old promising cartoonist. The book is about Junior's life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his decision to go to a nearly all-white public high school away from the reservation. The graphic novel includes 65 comic illustrations that help further the plot.

Book censorship is the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic, or educational material on the grounds that it is objectionable according to the standards applied by the censor. The first instance of book censorship in what is now known as the United States, took place in 1637 in modern-day Quincy, Massachusetts. While specific titles caused bouts of book censorship, with Uncle Tom’s Cabin frequently cited as the first book subject to a national ban, censorship of reading materials and their distribution remained sporadic in the United States until the Comstock Laws in 1873. It was in the early 20th century that book censorship became a more common practice and source of public debate. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries there have been waves of attempts at widespread book censorship in the US. Since 2022, the country has seen a dramatic increase of attempted and successful censorship, with a 63% rise in reported cases between 2022 and 2023, including a substantial rise in challenges filed to hundreds of books at a time. In recent years, about three-fourths of books subject to censorship in the US are for children, pre-teenagers, and teenagers.

<i>The Carnival at Bray</i> 2014 young adult novel by Jessie Ann Foley

The Carnival at Bray is a young adult novel by American author Jessie Ann Foley. The book was an Honor Book shortlisted for the American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award for literary merit in 2015. The association's young adult division also named the book one of the 10 "Best Fiction for Young Adults" and had short-listed it for the 2015 William C. Morris Award for debut novels for young adults.

Jennifer Niven is a New York Times and international best selling American author who is best known for the 2015 young adult book All the Bright Places.

<i>A Court of Thorns and Roses</i> Book series by Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Thorns and Roses is a fantasy romance series by American author Sarah J. Maas, which follows the journey of 19-year-old Feyre Archeron after she is brought into the faerie lands of Prythian. The first book of the series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, was released in May 2015. The series centers on Feyre's adventures across Prythian and the faerie courts, following the epic love story and fierce struggle that ensues after she enters the fae lands. The series has sold over 13 million copies. There are currently 5 novels in the series, and a sixth installment, confirmed by Maas, in the works.

References

  1. McGhee, Tom (2008-02-27). """Freedom Writers" tale inspires students"". www.denverpost.com. Retrieved 2008-03-26.
  2. "Teacher suspended over controversial book". www.msnbc.com. Archived from the original on 2008-03-30. Retrieved 2008-03-26.
  3. Teacher banned for using 'Freedom Writers' book Archived September 26, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  4. "'Freedom Writers' founder defends high school teacher". www.indystar.com. Archived from the original on 2013-01-27. Retrieved 2008-03-26.
  5. "These books are banned in Martin County, Florida". 13 March 2023.
  6. "Utah lawmaker accuses school district of distributing porn to minors through books".
  7. https://www.katyisd.org/Page/4310#:~:text=No%20materials%20in%20elementary%20and,opt%2Din%20for%20student%20access.
  8. https://www.katyisd.org/Page/4123