The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them

The Freedom Writers Diary is a nonfiction book that collects the stories of English teacher Erin Gruwell and her students at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, as they move from their freshman to senior years from 1994-1998. The book is divided into eight major sections, one for the fall and spring of each year, as well as a forward and epilogue. Each major section begins with an introductory entry from Ms. Gruwell, followed by anonymous, numbered diary entries from her students. 

At the beginning of the book, Ms. Gruwell is just about to start her first official year as an English teacher. As a student teacher the previous year, Ms. Gruwell found a racial caricature one of her students had drawn of Sharaud, her most difficult student. When she compared this drawing to the propaganda the Nazis used during the Holocaust, she realized her students didn’t know what the Holocaust was and decided to focus the remainder of the year on tolerance. Her efforts attracted positive attention from the media, but she also received death threats and endured disparaging racial comments from neighbors. Her school department head, leery of her unconventional teaching methods and worried about negative publicity, assigned Ms.