Another asked, “What are Jews?”
Erin Gruwell’s contract was not renewed after her fourth year—the administration said she was “too intense.” But by then, she had already won. The students she was never supposed to save had saved themselves. the freedom writers
Erin was stunned. She realized these students, hardened by gang violence and systemic neglect, were living in the trenches of their own war but knew nothing of the ones that came before. So she put away The Scarlet Letter and Great Expectations . Instead, she brought in rap lyrics and compared them to the poetry of the Bosnian conflict. She confiscated a diary from a girl who had been beaten and read an excerpt from The Diary of Anne Frank . Another asked, “What are Jews
The class began calling themselves the “Freedom Writers”—a deliberate echo of the civil rights-era “Freedom Riders.” They saw their pens as their weapons, their education as their emancipation. They broke the racial code. Latino students sat next to Cambodians. Black gang members protected the smaller kids. They formed a family, not because they were told to, but because they chose to. She realized these students, hardened by gang violence
One student raised a hand. “What’s the Holocaust?”