While I was firstly reading “The Freedom Writers’ Diary,” by Erin Gruwell, I was expecting the book to be tedious and humdrum. The story is set to happen in a classroom – Room 203 – at Wilson High School, located in California; and as we all know, high school is a place where we learn and communicate on a daily basis. However, I was given a total shock and impressed after I fully comprehend the context of this book. The book is formatted as a collection of diaries, written by different students from the same “self-segregated class.” Listening to Ms. Gruwell’s suggestion, all students record their struggles, joys, and daily experience in their diaries.
When I was reading the book, one question kept revolving in my mind: I eagerly
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What is one of the themes of this book? I guess the writer tries to point out many existing stereotypes in life. While I was reading the book, I tried to find out some of them. On page 254, the quote “on my way… me” discrimination could lead to stereotypes, the theorem is that discrimination increases prejudice through the reactions it provokes its victims. In the first entry, “troubled students” bred a higher rate of troubles, and teachers can then use the troublesome circumstances to justify continuing the discrimelaborates a general stereotype - the teacher thinks Asians are smart, while the Latino or the black could hardly get into the universities they like. This is also a reason why teachers except for Ms. Gruwell believe “troubled kids” don’t have any potential to make a change: they don’t even expect them to change and thus do nothing about them. The stereotypes could also result from lots of factors in society as well. According to my personal research and from a psychological perspective, stereotypes have social, emotional and cognitive roots. Socials roots include social inequalities, discrimination, and what is called in-group bias in psychology. And meanwhile cognitive roots contain categorization. Social inequalities appear everywhere in the book. To be specific, on page 23, a dyslexic student who cannot learn normally as many others do was not treated equally by his teacher and peers. Everyone was laughing at him and saying he was stupid. One may therefore wonder how come ination against those kids. In-group bias occurred as well. On page 8, we all see that students at school actually divide themselves into many groups of their own race. And on page 10, a translated quote meaning “my neighbourhood is the best” indicates that every one of these students thinks his or her race is the best, which meets all the criteria of both in-group bias theory categorization. Last but not the least, speaking of
3. How is the racial issue – a main theme of this book – clearly introduces in Chapter 1?
Throughout the novel many problems occur. Some of the main problems are racial and equality issues. Events in this book show how prejudice and intolerance can ruin numerous friendships and change lives.
Stereotyping plays a large role in the events of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. The two main opposing groups, the Socs and Greasers, constantly face problems because of the stereotypes associated with their social groups. As seen in the novel, stereotypes and prejudice cause extreme and unnecessary conflicts. Both groups have predetermined opinions of the other, but as the story progresses, many of the characters begin to realize how similar the groups can be. The stereotypes observed in the novel can easily be compared to those in real life. Both the Greasers and the Socs share many of their opinions with the other members of their groups, and this leads to many misunderstandings. In fact, most of the conflicts in the novel are caused
Adriane Lentz-Smith wrote the book called the Freedom of Struggles, Who is an associate Professor of History at Duke University. Adriane had studied history and African American studies. She was successful in everything Adriane did, she had many goals to achieve. One of the goals were to get across one point about how war world 1 and African Americans goes to Europe with American expeditionary forces in World War 1. How the story was a critical movement in the book “freedom of struggles”. Adriane was an aggressive and powerful writer and wanted everyone to hear her story on African Americans going to war, how back in time it interferes with the Europe civilians an African troops she illustrates an mobilized generation.
The most important theme in this book was the trials and tribulations of racism because it was woven in every part of the plot, it contributed to the conflict and resolutions, and gave the story a connection to current events, helping the reader’s comprehension.
Writers and artists incorporate imagery into their works in order to describe the challenges that come with diversity. Struggles appear to people who do not fit the status quo as characters feel isolated from their country and the people within it, frowned upon by other citizens, and faced with countless challenges. Individuals facing challenges often have to find a way to escape their hardship, indicating that they are upset with being controlled. In the short story “Liberty” written by Julia Alvarez, a family from the Dominican Republic faces the challenge of getting their Visas in order to escape the dictatorship in their country. Although the main character Julia is sad to leave her dog named Liberty behind, she has no choice but to kick
Freedom Writers begins with 23-year old Erin Gruwell starting her first year as a teacher. She is extremely optimistic, until a fight breaks out in her classroom on the very first day. The principal warns her not to get her hopes up, seeing as those students most likely will drop out after freshman or sophomore year. Most of them
“Freedom Writers” is a powerful film that is based on a true story about a teacher named Erin Gruwell, who struggles to connect with her students to make them believe that they can succeed in life, and to show them that their lives, experiences, and knowledge is valuable, all while attempting to unify them and to overcome racial segregation and gang violence that is part of their daily lives. Gruwell focuses on introducing the concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom. She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted; Gruwell refers to the composition books as “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
Harriet Jacobs, in her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was born into slavery in the south. While her youth contained “six years of happy childhood,” a few tragedies and mistresses later, Jacobs spent many years in pain under the possession of her cruel five-year-old mistress, Emily Flint, and Emily’s father, Dr. Flint. Once able to obtain freedom, Jacobs spent most of her life working for the Anti-Slavery office in New York, in hope that one day she could make a difference in the world. “She sought to win the respect and admiration of her readers for the courage with which she forestalled abuse and for the independence with which she chose a lover rather than having one forced on her” (Jacobs 921). Linda Brett, the pseudonym that Jacobs uses to narrate her life story, endures the harsh behavior women slaves were treated with in the south during the nineteenth century. The dominant theme of the corruptive power and psychological abuse of slavery, along with symbolism of good and evil, is demonstrated throughout her narrative to create a story that exposes the terrible captivity woman slaves suffered. The reality of slavery in the past, versus slavery today is used to reveal how the world has changed and grown in the idea of racism and neglect.
Racism and stereotypes occur greatly throughout the life of Jesmyn ward. The Men We Reaped would talk about how African American males would not leave their town because all of the influences that are around their life. So the research articles in sociology and psychology talk a lot about the stereotypes of African American males and women are more prone to stay in their home town and not do much with their life. So these articles hopefully will give insight to anybody that reads these articles and realize how people actually stereotypes African Americans. The way Men We Reaped relates to the topic that I chose and the book has material that talks a lot about racism and stereotyping.
Freedom Writers is a movie based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary by teacher Erin Gruwell. The movie was directed by Richard LaGravenese and it was released in 2007. This movie discusses significant themes such as stereotyping and racial discrimination but most important the power of tolerance and understanding. The purpose of this movie is to promote the message that knowledge is power and in a world filled with disparities where hundreds of ethnic groups convey and interact humans are obliged to accept and tolerate the differences that define each person. This film is a perfect example of how these rhetorical components are used to create an effective argument. The director of the movie as well as the characters build their
The theme hate is present in all the stories that we read this semester. Every story has an overwhelming amount of hatred, all hatred of another race. There is no other reason for the hatred other than the race they are. The goal they have is to mock or hurt or kill the others for being exactly who they are, and they can’t help it. I will talk about all the stories we learned about in this class and how this theme made it the book that it is.
“Everybody thinks you should be happy just because you’re young. They don’t see the wars that we fight every single day”. Brandy Ross, one of the students in the movie Freedom Writers once said. This is the predicament that the students in Woodrow Wilson High School faced every day. There are dead bodies on the street, the students have to protect themselves from other gangs, and most of them didn’t finish high school. It might not be a big issue for us because we didn’t face it by ourselves, but after watching this movie you will know that it is a significant thing to look at. The differences among race caused all of these problems, to deal with this is not easy at all. Freedom Writers show us that we can live our life with distinction because it shows us how to understand and accept dissimilarity that we have and also to
They were stories of broken and dysfunctional homes, being kicked out of the house for being part of a gang, to being beaten up just because they were different. Reading these journals Mrs. “G” realized how similar each student’s stories were no matter the race, ethnicity or gender. Even though the students did not see eye to eye, they all had many things in common: they were all in gangs; they each had their own stories to tell; each student has dealt with the shooting of a friend, each student want to communicate to others, and each student wanted to be respected.
The book’s character’s main problem is finding individuality in racism. For the duration of the book, the narrator is constantly fighting racism and stereotypes. Ellison put many examples in the book to help show the character’s fight to be seen equal. Ellison shows that, through the character himself, that you can not tell people who to be. However, Ellison throws curves at the narrator that challenges