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The Freedom Writers Diary

by Erin Gruwell

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What is the setting of The Freedom Writers Diary?

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The setting of The Freedom Writers Diary is Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California in the middle of the 1990s.

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The setting of The Freedom Writers Diary is Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, primarily the classroom of Erin Gruwell in the mid 1990s.

The Freedom Writers themselves are students at this school, and Gruwell is their teacher, who inspires and curates their work. Gruwell started work at Wilson High School as a student teacher in 1994, and the book is the result of a course of study she pioneered there over the next few years. In 1996, Gruwell was able to invite Zlata Filipović, the author of one of the books they had read together, to come to Long Beach and meet the students, who had been inspired by her work.

Wilson High School is rather negatively presented in The Freedom Writers Diary. Gruwell was initially assigned to teach the lowest-ability students at the school, several of whom had violent and abusive backgrounds. The way the book depicts the school is somewhat at odds with its public image as a classical high school, meaning one that offers a higher level of diploma than other local schools. The school is racially and socially diverse and caters to a wide range of ability, and these aspects of the setting are clearly reflected in The Freedom Writers Diary.

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