77 pages • 2 hours read
Erin Gruwell and Freedom WritersThe Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Racial Identity and Tolerance
In and outside of school, the students’ lives are organized according to their racial identity. As one student writes, “Schools are just like the city and the city is just like prison. All of them are divided into separate sections, depending on race” (9-10). Because students regularly encounter race-based violence on the streets, they self-segregate by race at school. Even if they avoid joining a gang, they might be attacked on the street simply for the color of their skin.
Initially, the students identify strongly with their race. They feel they have to defend people of their own race, even if they are guilty, and that they need to return force with force, even if it means their own death. But as the book progresses, the students become more tolerant of people different than them. Ms. Gruwell makes tolerance the focus of her curriculum. The students play the “Peanut Game,” in which they learn that “a peanut is still a peanut even if the shell is different” and not to “judge a peanut by its shell” (38). They read books that emphasize tolerance, visit the Museum of Tolerance, and speak to Holocaust survivors. A pivotal moment for the students is when Zlata Filipovic visits the class in their sophomore year. She emphasizes that she is not any particular ethnicity, but “a human being,” which prompts one student to reconsider her own use of labels. She had always been taught to be proud of being Latina, but now she believes that it is more important to fight against labels and remember that all people are humans.
Many of the students have similar personal revelations. One student, testifying for a judge, plans to lie to protect her friend Paco against their “rivals,” who “had it coming” for killing one of their friends and attacking her. But when the moment comes, she tells the truth. Another student is nervous when assigned to hotel room with students of different races during the trip to New York in senior year. Thanks to her prejudiced father, she had never shared a space with someone outside of her own race. By the end of the trip, the roommates are laughing and sharing everything, and she has come to believe father’s beliefs were wrong. She vows that she will teach her children “how special it is to bond with another person who looks different but is actually just like them” (229).
The Importance of Family
The family, biological or not, is a crucial support system for the students as they work to improve their lives. Many of Ms. Gruwell’s students have absent, neglectful, or abusive family members. At the beginning of the book, many of these students found the support of family with others of their own race. One gang member describes joining a gang as a “baptism: They give us their life and we give them a new one.” As the book goes on, the Freedom Writers and Ms. Gruwell take over this role of surrogate family. As one student writes, “Unlike my biological family, the Freedom Writers understand me and have been there for a long time” (191).
Later in the book, Ms. Gruwell encourages the students to learn about their family’s cultural heritage. Some students grow to appreciate the efforts of their parents, like a student who learns that her family was wealthy in Nicaragua before they were forced to flee ahead of a changing political regime. Another student realizes that when his parents forced him into rehab, they actually saved his life. For these students, their biological family joins the Freedom Writers and Ms. Gruwell as part of their support system.
Other students find their negative beliefs about their parents reinforced and vow they will be different. One student pushes for more information about his absent father. His mother takes him to his father’s house, where his grandmother opens the door and says that his father is sick. The student believes that this incident proves his father is “a coward because he had someone cover for him. He could not face his own son like a real man…Learning from my father’s mistakes, I know I am not going to be a coward like him” (214). In these cases, the family acts not as a support system, but as a moral foil for the students to react against.
The Power of Literature and Writing to Create Change
The power of literature to create change is a central theme of the book. By reading books about people like them, writing about their personal experience, and eventually sharing their personal experiences in a book, the Freedom Writers come to see the world differently. First, they begin to connect with the characters in the books, but they still don’t feel empowered to make changes in their own lives. Reading Zlata’s book is a tipping point for the students, as they see someone their own age and in a very similar situation changing her circumstances. They invite her to visit them. Meanwhile, in their personal lives, the students begin to reflect on ways that they can change. They begin to take their schoolwork more seriously, get involved in extra-curricular activities, and speak out against violence and injustice.
Some students still struggle to change. One student feels ashamed because she is a “closet drinker” but worries that if she stops drinking “people will not like the sober me” (67). Another student confesses that she is not ready to change. “I know I should stop, but it would be wrong to stop for someone else. When I hear cheesy clichés like ‘Hugs not drugs,’ or ‘Be smart, don’t start,’ it makes me want to do it more. Yack, yack, yack. Come on, get real, how boring! Quite honestly, I’m just not ready to quit yet” (99).
These counter-examples illustrate that change is not a simple process, as students must struggle with their own feelings of shame and doubt in addition to the structural racism and violence that surrounds them.
Individual Heroism
Individual heroism is a major implicit theme in The Freedom Writers Diary. Ms. Gruwell is a self-described “unorthodox” teacher. Her teaching methods and attitude set her apart from the other teachers and are the source of her success. She carries this theme of individuality into the classroom. Her students read American author Ralph Waldo Emerson and think about “self-reliance” and learn about Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic, heroic individuals who coped with terrible tragedies by writing.
One student recalls a poem they read before Miep Gies’ visit. Ms. Gruwell told them “to be the kind of people that have enough passion to change the world. If we let ourselves be fire, thunder, or lightning, we could alter everything” (88). When Miep visits, a student asks her if she considers herself a hero, and she tells them that they are the real heroes. Afterward, a student realizes that “Ms. Gruwell wanted us to realize that we could change the way things were, and Miep wanted to take Anne’s message and share it with the world” (89).
The book is told collectively, blending the students’ individual narratives into a single story, but the entries often refer to individual responsibility for actions. In one entry, a student reflects that women need to “start respecting themselves more” if they want men to stop using “their bodies as objects instead of cherishing them as if they were treasures” (125). In another, a student wonders why she didn’t intercede to stop a sorority hazing ritual. “Being a Freedom Writer, I couldn’t understand how I just stood by and let all of this go on,” she writes (125).
On rare occasions, the book address systemic reasons the students may be struggling in school. Ms. Gruwell, writing in the epilogue, says, “It wasn’t until we established a supportive classroom environment in Room 203 and were allowed freedom of expression that the students realized violence is never the answer” (276). The support of their group allowed gave the students power to act against the norms of their lives in ways that they struggled to do outside of this environment. Still, Ms. Gruwell emphasizes individual expression as the real source of the students’ success, and the changes she makes to create the underlying supportive environment—the donors, the guest speakers, the mentors she arranges from her college class—come from her personal charisma and connections rather than a change to the educational system.
