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Main Street Books
October 1999
On Sale: October 12, 1999
304 pages
ISBN: 038549422X
EAN: 9780385494229
Trade Size
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Young Adult
Straight from the front line of urban America, the
inspiring story of one fiercely determined teacher and her
remarkable students.
As an idealistic twenty-three-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 an ugly 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 in these books to 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 courageous Dutch woman who
sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California,
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 “Prime Time
Live” and “All Things Considered,” coverage in People
magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education
Richard Riley—and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers
have graduated from high school and are now attending
college. With powerful entries from the students’ own diaries and a
narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary
is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work,
courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives
of a teacher and her students. The authors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to The
Tolerance Education Foundation, an organization set up to
pay for the Freedom Writers’ college tuition. Erin Gruwell
is now a visiting professor at California State University,
Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers.
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