FREE: The Freedom Writers Diary

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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. 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 is a pun on the name of the civil rights group Freedom Riders.

Gruwell received the inspiration to teach them using the techniques described in the book after intercepting a racist drawing from one of her students. When she compared the drawings to Nazi propaganda techniques, she drew blank stares because none of them had heard of the Holocaust. As a result, she assigned them to read and write about The Diary of Anne Frank and 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.