“We are all ordinary people. But, even an ordinary secretary or a house wife or a teenager can within their own small ways turn on a small light in a dark room.”
This is the message that Erin Gruwell, a school teacher in Long Beach, California, tries to ingrain in her students’ minds. Her task is not made any easy, with racial tension at its peak during the times after the race-driven riots in California in the early nineties. She leads her class, with students from varied backgrounds – blacks, Hispanics, Cambodians, whites – from animosity and distrust, to form a closely knit group of youngsters who had all found the meanings of their lives, through the stories and experiences of their classmates. She initiates this change with the introduction of an assignment that involved the students writing and maintaining a personal journal. In this they jotted down all their inhibitions, their harsh experiences, and all what they thought life was about. This journal was the healer for their hearts wounded by the experiences they had had. The journals of these students from Erin’s first batch, who named themselves as the ‘Freedom Writers’, were compiled and made into a book “THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY - How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to ChangeThemselves and the World Around Them”, which inspired the movie.
This movie helped me imbibe in myself, more strongly, the lines I had started with.
Related Links -
The site of the Freedom Writers Foundation
The official site of the movie
Reviews on the movie
Go here for the soundtrack - A dream - wonderful words
This is the message that Erin Gruwell, a school teacher in Long Beach, California, tries to ingrain in her students’ minds. Her task is not made any easy, with racial tension at its peak during the times after the race-driven riots in California in the early nineties. She leads her class, with students from varied backgrounds – blacks, Hispanics, Cambodians, whites – from animosity and distrust, to form a closely knit group of youngsters who had all found the meanings of their lives, through the stories and experiences of their classmates. She initiates this change with the introduction of an assignment that involved the students writing and maintaining a personal journal. In this they jotted down all their inhibitions, their harsh experiences, and all what they thought life was about. This journal was the healer for their hearts wounded by the experiences they had had. The journals of these students from Erin’s first batch, who named themselves as the ‘Freedom Writers’, were compiled and made into a book “THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY - How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to ChangeThemselves and the World Around Them”, which inspired the movie.
This movie helped me imbibe in myself, more strongly, the lines I had started with.
Related Links -
The site of the Freedom Writers Foundation
The official site of the movie
Reviews on the movie
Go here for the soundtrack - A dream - wonderful words
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