young boy of color sitting at a desk with an open notebook on it

The Freedom Writers Diary

by Erin Gruwell

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Section 5 Summary

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Junior Year: Fall 1996

School starts tomorrow, and Ms. Gruwell is just now leaving France for America; she will no doubt be exhausted tomorrow. She taught several summer classes at National University so she could afford this trip to visit Miep and Zlata, among other things. She brought them gifts from her students and is bringing back many keepsakes and materials from her trip to show her students. These tokens are part of her plan to bring world literature to life, but this year she must do the same with American literature. Erin Gruwell knows last year will be a difficult year to beat.

One new student in Ms. G’s class is particularly thankful to be here. She used to be a kind of spokesperson for Black students in her predominantly white classroom—but not by choice. The English teacher she had is a bigot and refuses to read works by Black authors because, he says, they are full of “sex, fornication, drugs, and cussing.” Now, in Ms. G’s class, this student has the freedom to be a spokesperson for herself.

As the class reads Emerson and Thoreau, students think about what it means to be a nonconformist and to be misunderstood. Most of the students in this class are misunderstood as well as underestimated, and they know they must practice nonconformity in order to change things. The idea of self-reliance is more difficult for these students, but one of them learns that she must quit making excuses and take responsibility for her own destiny. Ms. G points out to her that the only obstacles in her life are the ones she allows. The student vows to find her “weakest link” and strengthen it, as she wants to be a self-reliant person, “now and forever.”

The Catcher in the Rye is the next novel Ms. Gruwell has her class read. One student has a family history of depression and believes he may suffer from the affliction as well. Until reading about Holden Caulfield’s reaction to his friend’s suicide, this student has never thought about the effects or consequences of suicide on those left behind.  He had never thought of anything but his “own losing battle.”

Self-made millionaire John Tu is gracious to Ms. Gruwell’s students, even offering one of them a job and a chance to turn his life in a different direction. Another student wishes things were different, that there would not be a double standard about sex between men and women. No one congratulates her for losing her virginity as they would have if she were a boy; instead people see her as a “tramp or a ho.”

Several students have a connection to The Color Purple. Just as Celie was “violated, tormented, humiliated, degraded,” so was one student—by her uncle Joe, a man she once trusted. Another girl in class has been in an abusive relationship which nearly consumed her, and another has watched as her mother is beaten up by her stepfather. Once, when her mother called for her help, she saw that color, the color purple, coming from her mother’s eye where her husband had punched her. Now she understands that the color purple is more than just the name of a book.

Ms. Gruwell is teaching a diversity class at National University, a class for teachers who will one day have their own classrooms and students. Ms. G takes some of her students to speak, and she asks one of the boys to talk about his experience with homelessness. The boy is intimidated and does not intend to say anything revealing; however, he finds himself discussing his wayward father to complete strangers, after years of keeping it all inside. The college students are supportive, and he is relieved and thankful that Ms. G chose to “pick on him” today.

One of the boy’s classmates is barely listening to the story of homelessness; he is thinking of his own family troubles: divorced parents, a brother who was paralyzed during brain surgery, and that brother’s slow and agonizing death. Death is real for him.

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