A review by fiona_leonard
The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them by Erin Gruwell

4.0

If you haven't seen the movie of Freedom Writers, I would highly recommend you do so. It's a terrific movie and also provides a useful scene setter for the book. This is one of the rare cases where it is better to see the movie first. Rather than be a narrative that parallels the movie, the book focuses on the journal entries of the students, many of whom were featured in the movie. The journal entries are at once depressing, fascinating and inspiring. They provide a really interesting snapshot into the world of inner city Los Angeles, looking in particular at the drug and gang culture and the lives of kids struggling to be more than they were predestined to be. I suspect that having read the journal entries, it would be good to now go back and watch the film again as you would admire them even more. As a writer and as someone who teaches English, I was also struck by the way in which literature was used to connect with kids on so many different levels.