http://www.interferenceslitteraires.be
ISSN : 2031 - 2790
Audrey Louckx
The Freedom Writers’ Diary
An Example of Testimonial Texts of Social Empowerment
Abstract
Presented as a collection of diary entries by “at risk students” from Wilson
High School in Long Beach, California, The Freedom Writers’ Diary demonstrates the
subversive nature of diary writing which allows voiceless minorities to express their
social distress. As it illustrates a new literary and editorial development in contemporary American culture, the book is part of what I call testimonial texts of social
empowerment. Testimonies, the protean text par excellence, have come to be part of
the American cultural and literary scene by appropriating different literary genres to
which they append their specificity and struggle for social awareness. In the Freedom
Writers’ case, which I will analyze, the diary, which here represents the choral cry of a
minority craving for social recognition, challenges its reader to a reassessment of the
diarist, his text and the reading it should induce.
Résumé
Recueil d’instants intimes empruntés à la vie (et aux textes) d’élèves « à problèmes » d’une école californienne, le Freedom Writers’ Diary prouve à quel point le
journal intime peut apparaître comme un genre subversif offrant aux ‘sans-voix’ une
possibilité d’exprimer un malaise social trop longtemps ignoré par leurs contemporains.
Exemple symptomatique d’une mouvance littéraire de la culture contemporaine aux
États-Unis, il s’inscrit dans le genre de ce que je nomme textes testimoniaux visant un
empowerment social (Testimonial Texts of Social Empowerment). Le témoignage entre dans la
littérature et la culture états-uniennes contemporaines par le biais d’une appropriation de
différents genres littéraires, leur accolant à la fois sa spécificité propre et son dessein de
révolution sociale. Dans le cas que je me propose d’analyser, le journal intime, se faisant
porte-parole d’une collectivité minoritaire cherchant une reconnaissance sociale, pousse
le lecteur à une réévaluation du diariste, de son texte et de la lecture qu’il doit en faire.
To refer to this article :
Audrey Louckx, “The Freedom Writers’ Diary. An example of Testimonial Texts of
Social Empowerment”, in: Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties, November
2012, 9, Matthieu Sergier & Sonja Vanderlinden (eds.), “The Writer’s Diary. Generic
Freedoms of a Writing Practice”, 129-144.
Comité de direction - Directiecomité
David Martens (KULeuven & UCL) – Rédacteur en chef - Hoofdredacteur
Matthieu Sergier (UCL & Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis), Guillaume Willem (KULeuven) & Laurence van Nuijs
(FWO – KULeuven) – Secrétaires de rédaction - Redactiesecretarissen
Elke D’hoker (KULeuven)
Lieven D’hulst (KULeuven – Kortrijk)
Hubert Roland (FNRS – UCL)
Myriam Watthee-Delmotte (FNRS – UCL)
Conseil de rédaction - Redactieraad
Geneviève Fabry (UCL)
Anke Gilleir (KULeuven)
Gian Paolo Giudiccetti (UCL)
Agnès Guiderdoni (FNRS – UCL)
Ortwin de Graef (KULeuven)
Ben de Bruyn (FWO - KULeuven)
Jan Herman (KULeuven)
Marie Holdsworth (UCL)
Guido Latré (UCL)
Nadia Lie (KULeuven)
Michel Lisse (FNRS – UCL)
Anneleen Masschelein (FWO – KULeuven)
Christophe Meurée (FNRS – UCL)
Reine Meylaerts (KULeuven)
Stéphanie Vanasten (FNRS – UCL)
Bart Van den Bosche (KULeuven)
Marc van Vaeck (KULeuven)
Pieter Verstraeten (KULeuven)
Comité scientifique - Wetenschappelijk comité
Olivier Ammour-Mayeur (Monash University - Merbourne)
Ingo Berensmeyer (Universität Giessen)
Lars Bernaerts (Universiteit Gent & Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Faith Binckes (Worcester College - Oxford)
Philiep Bossier (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Franca Bruera (Università di Torino)
Àlvaro Ceballos Viro (Université de Liège)
Christian Chelebourg (Université de Nancy II)
Edoardo Costadura (Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena)
Nicola Creighton (Queen’s University Belfast)
William M. Decker (Oklahoma State University)
Dirk Delabastita (Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la
Paix - Namur)
Michel Delville (Université de Liège)
César Dominguez (Universidad de Santiago de Compostella
& King’s College)
Gillis Dorleijn (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Ute Heidmann (Université de Lausanne)
Klaus H. Kiefer (Ludwig Maxilimians Universität München)
Michael Kohlhauer (Université de Savoie)
Isabelle Krzywkowski (Université de Grenoble)
Sofiane Laghouati (Musée Royal de Mariemont)
François Lecercle (Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne)
Ilse Logie (Universiteit Gent)
Marc Maufort (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Isabelle Meuret (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Christina Morin (Queen’s University Belfast)
Miguel Norbartubarri (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Olivier Odaert (Université de Limoges)
Andréa Oberhuber (Université de Montréal)
Jan Oosterholt (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg)
Maïté Snauwaert (University of Alberta - Edmonton)
Interférences littéraires / Literaire interferenties
KULeuven – Faculteit Letteren
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 – Bus 3331
B 3000 Leuven (Belgium)
Contact : matthieu.sergier@uclouvain.be & laurence.vannuijs@arts.kuleuven.be
Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties, n° 9, novembre 2012
The Freedom Writers’ Diary
An Example of Testimonial Texts of Social Empowerment
Fall 1994, Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach California, in the
midst of the LA riots, racial violence is at its highest. Young English teacher Erin
Gruwell, hoping to gain her credentials, enters room 203 in which she is faced
with a group of “at risk, unteachable”1 students. These teenagers living in the
‘hood’ are each day ‘bused in’2 to the preppy environment of Wilson High in the
name of integration policies. A true idealist, Erin Gruwell believes in the legitimacy of such policies and wishes to follow her “meticulously planned lessons”3 to the
letter. She quickly realizes that her students instinctively reproduce within the classroom the segregated environment they live in. The students regard school as either
an alternative to rehab and even boot camp or some kind of societal dead end
for them to endure in order to survive longer, even remotely. Yet, a pivotal event
is to change Gruwell’s and her students’ lives forever. When Gruwell intercepts a
racial caricature circulating the classroom, she “[goes] ballistic”.4 Comparing the
sketch to Holocaust propaganda, she hopes to eventually open her students’ eyes
on their contemptible racial hatred. To her amazement, she only reaps up puzzled
looks. None of her students knows what the Holocaust is, though most of them
have already been shot at. Gruwell instantly decides to “make tolerance the core
of [her] curriculum”.5 She offers each of her students a notebook and prompts
them to write one page a day: “Everyone has their own story. And it is important
to tell your story, even to yourself ”.6 These events are the birth of the Freedom
Writers’ Diary.
In this paper, I wish to propose a generic approach of the Freedom Writers’
text. Though it displays the characteristics Alain Girard assigns to literary diaries,
the Freedom Writer’s work can also be attached to a renewed use of testimonial
literature in contemporary American culture. Illustrating a new literary and editorial development, these testimonials seek to raise public awareness on situations
of social injustice through the disclosure of the witnesses’ first-hand experience
of discrimination. Several collections of testimonials published over the last two
1. Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary. Broadway Books, New
York, 1999, 5.
2. A reference is made here to the specific integration policies according to which students
from racial minorities are driven by bus from their underprivileged neighborhoods to previously
predominantly white schools.
3. Ibid., 3.
4. Ibid., 2.
5. Ibidem.
6. Quote extracted from Richard Lagravanese’s 2007 movie Freedom Writers, United States of
America.
129
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
decades on miscellaneous subjects share a fervent and earnest social project.
Their editors and authors consider writing as a genuine way to act within the urgency of a situation of social injustice. I define these texts as follows: collections
of narratives in any written form (including transcriptions of oral testimonies)
of painful episodes of life experience involving a perception of injustice by their
narrator. The subjects through their narration are posited as witnesses portraying
their experience as members of a collectivity undergoing a situation of social
injustice. That collectivity is presented as a social minority, that is, a community
in a situation of inferiority and most probably subordination. The witnesses are
urged to narrate in the hope to denounce and exorcize that present oppressive
condition, leading to their own both social and psychological empowerment and
that of the collectivity as a whole. The witnesses’ narration, although telling first
and foremost a personal story and serving personal goals through self-disclosure,
is part of a project carried out in order to induce readers to engage in restoring
social justice. In the case of the Freedom Writers, the format of the diary is then
perceived as going against basic assumptions about the genre of the diary. The
diary, a private, intimate, even sometimes secret activity, is adopted as a means to
spread a social message and call for action.
As I will demonstrate in this paper, testimony, the protean text par excellence,
comes to be part of the American cultural and literary scene by appropriating
different literary genres to which it appends its specificity and struggle for social
awareness. In the case of the Freedom Writers, it is the form of the diary which
serves as a cultural springboard for racial minorities to express their distress. The
text thus emphasizes its expressive or rather perlocutionary function as derived
from and supported by its formal characteristics. I will begin by presenting the
Freedom Writers’ text through the lens of Girard’s consideration of the external
(formal) characteristics of the diary, calling for theoretical remarks from other
scholars like Françoise Simonet-Tenant, Philippe Lejeune, Patricia Meyer Spacks
or Sébastien Hubier to clarify the possible discrepancies between diaries and testimonies. I wish then to approach the functional aspects of the text, notably
through the notion of journals as an educational practice, and explain what can
be labeled a generic shift displayed through the different entries of the Freedom
Writers Diary. Through a description of Kimberly Nance’s delineation of LatinAmerican Testimonio, I wish to argue that authenticity, which is developed through
sincere and direct descriptions of the situation of social injustice,7 is at the core
of the testimonials’ capacity for gaining their readers’ commitment through the
impact of empathy. As authenticity is often considered an intrinsic characteristic
of diary writing, the process of the generic shift works so as to put in the foreground the functional (perlocutionary) power of some of the formal characteristics testimonials are borrowing from the genre they are assimilating. I will finish
with remarks on the editing and publishing processes which gave birth to the
Freedom writers’ Diary, as they will allow me to expose the actual implementation
of the generic shift within the text and its consequences for reception.
7. Nance’s own term is « situation of suffering ». Kimberly A. Nance, Can Literature Promote
Justice ? Trauma Narrative and Social Action in Latin American Testimonio, Nashville, Vanderbilt University
Press, 2006, 72.
130
Audrey Louckx
1. Diary
In the proceedings of the 1975 Conference on the Journal Intime in Grenoble,
the interveners, who were engaged in a debate on the possible definition of this
‘new’ literary genre, insisted on the fact that it had to be defined according to its
form rather than according to its content which, as it carries the private premises of
the genre, is likely to be highly extensive. Form, then, that is – the dated format –
and function – the recurrent daily process of recording – are the journal’s founding
characteristics. Philippe Lejeune in his work ‘Cher Cahier…’ Témoignages sur le journal
personnel contends that the habit of journal keeping, and more precisely when one
considers its intimate variation, can be defined not by its content but by its function,
whether considered as an objective (recording facts) or a subjective (commenting
feelings) practice.8 The Freedom Writers’ Diary apart from its title displays several
formal features of the genre. Though Alain Girard9 focuses on literary journals in
his work Le Journal intime, he proposes a list of specific external defining characteristics which allows first a formal and second a functional approach to the Freedom
Writers’ text.
1.2. Diaries are a day by day practice
Interestingly, Girard considers this characteristic as “the most obvious and
the less contentious one”.10 As Françoise Simonet-Tenant remarked in her contribution to the Conference Le Journal d’écrivain,11 the diary’s correlation to time is
expressed through its dated format; the entries follow a daily temporal logic. Yet, it
might be objected that in the case of the Freedom Writers’ Diary the day by day format is not totally and overtly respected. This is due both to its choral form and to its
publication: the editing process implied selecting entries from the different diaries
allowing all of the students’ voices to be heard. The entries, though chronologically
organized, are not dated and consequently do not always seem to follow the day
by day rationale. Nevertheless, when reading more thoroughly specific entries, it is
possible to unfailingly recreate the necessary temporal logic, in spite of the fact that
the reader hears different voices: “[Diary 114] I was very enthused and ready for
the trip [to New York], so I decided to call my father and explain that I was leaving
tomorrow”.12 “[Diary 116] The first night in New York was exciting. We arrived
and all I could think about was bumping into somebody famous”.13 The diaries,
here, present the logical course of events when describing a journey. Even though
the figure of the author is multiplied in a choir of voices, the temporal day-to-day
8. This is the disctinction between what Lejeune calls “carnet de bord” and “journal intime”
in Cahier de Sémiotique Textuelle, 17, Philippe Lejeune (ed.), “La Pratique du Journal Personnel : Enquête”,
1990, 54. All quotes from Lejeune are my translation.
9. All the following quotes from Girard are my translation.
10. Alain Girard, Le Journal intime, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1963, 2nd edition
1986, 3.
11. All the remarks are taken from Françoise Simonet-Tenant’s presentation, « Lettres et
journal personnel: rivalité ou complémentarité ? », during the conference Le Journal d’écrivain : Enjeux
et mutations d’un genre hybride, Université Catholique de Louvain, 19-21 May 2011, my transposition in
English (see, in this special issue, Simonet-Tenant’s article : pages 59-72).
12. ������
Erin Gruwell and The Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writer’s Diary, 223.
13. Ibid., 227.
131
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
form is carefully respected in order to re-create a necessary temporal atmosphere
of “dailiness”.14
1.2. Narration is governed by the pronoun “I”
Girard considers the author figure as both “the center of observation and
the center of convergence”15 within the text. Once again, in the case of the Freedom Writers’ Diary, this ubiquitous characteristic seems to be stretched beyond its
usual boundaries. Where Girard and all other theoreticians see the author figure, the
actual persona, as the defining and converging center of the diary, here the pronoun
‘I’ comes to fulfill that same pervasive function. In literary journals in their usual
form, the person writing appears as the actual unique center of the text speaking
through the pronoun ‘I’. Here, the pronoun itself becomes the center allowing a
plurality of voices to converge on one specific message to be conveyed. The voice
in each entry is a very different one but all of them are leveled out by the use of one
unique pronoun encompassing gender and racial differences, identical even though
always projecting a defined specific identity. This use of one same pronoun aims at
emphasizing the universality of the experience presented in each entry.
1.3. Observation has to be focused on the writer16
Since diaries are labeled ‘intimate’ in the French language, Girard contends
that texts must concentrate on the author’s private life. Intimacy which apparently
needs to be at the heart of the diary is notably expressed through ordinary “dailiness” as contend Patricia Meyer Spacks and Jennifer Sinor.17 Jennifer Sinor, in her
article, offers to read the “ordinary diary”, that is a diary “that seems boring, barren
and plain”,18 a diary which foregrounds “dailiness [as] the act of writing in the days
rather than of the days […]”and “forces the reader into the immediate present”.19
Such a remark echoes the idea that the diary is a writing of the here and now. By the
same token, Spacks distinguishes three possible forms of the diary based on their
content and the delight they might offer to the reader. The first two seem obviously
delightful either because they tell a compelling story (she mentions Boswell as an
example) or because they offer spicy revelations (Pepy’s diary). Yet, the third category, which she names “commonplace diaries”, “contain[s] no obvious revelations
and tell[s] no clear story […] [but] can also offer delight to an imaginative reader”.20
For Spacks, the commonplace diary epitomizes the “most obvious appeal of diaries,
14. Patricia Meyer-Spacks, “How to Read a Diary?”-Joint Meeting of the Academy and the
Boston Athenaeum, in; Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, American Academy of Art and Sciences, 2003, 56, 4, 58.
15. �������
Alain Girard, Le Journal intime, 3.
16. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
Though Girard considers this characteristic as being part of the diary format, the limit
between form, content and function will appear here as being blurred as some other scholars consider intimacy to be part of the content of the diary entries and their possible function as delightful
readings.
17. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
Girard also mentions the necessity of dailiness when considering the familiarity of the
relationship into which the author and the reader enter.
18. ����������
Jennifer Sinor, “Reading the Ordinary Diary”, in: Rhetoric Review, 2002, 21, 2, 123.
19. Ibidem, Emphasis in the original.
20. ����������
Patricia Meyer-Spacks, “How to Read a Diary?”, 47.
132
Audrey Louckx
[…] that of metaphorically looking over someone’s shoulder”.21 She likens the process to the tendency people may have of “listen[ing] to fragments of other people’s
conversations in restaurants”.22 In these cases, “the story depends more on the reader than
on the writer, though the reader would not be in a position to construct it without the
writer’s clues”.23 According to Spacks, this is the real and peculiar sense of intimacy
that a diary may offer to its reader, “sharing the trivia of the everyday”24 allows the
reader to feel in touch with the writer and to share his or her experience. She insists
that this might be the real reason which drives the audience to read diaries, more or
less “imaginatively sharing experiences”,25 feeling “reassur[ed] about the contours
of that humanity we share with people from other times and spaces”.26
In the case of the Freedom Writers Diary, this notion of the ordinary or the
commonplace defining intimacy is overwhelmingly present. Yet, the ordinary seems
to always be on the verge of what might be called the extra-ordinary at least in the
etymological sense of the term describing situations out of the ordinary, “outside
the normal course of events”.27 Though the readers may have the expectation of
sharing the experience of seemingly ordinary kids from a college in Long Beach,
California through “their story [and] their words”,28 they rapidly realize that these
kids live extra-ordinary lives:
Dear Diary, For many it’s the start of a new day, but for me, it’s the continuation of a nightmare. Every day before I leave my mom me percina with the sign
of the cross, praying that I come home safely. […] I’m fourteen and people
think I should be scared because I’m surrounded by violence, but around here
it’s an everyday thing. The first thing I see when I get off the bus is graffiti on
walls, beer bottles filling trashcans, empty cigarette packs, and syringes. On the
way home, I get chased mostly by older fools with bats and knives. I try going
different ways but they always notice me and chase me away.29
Nevertheless, the Freedom Writers’ project is unmistakably to insist on the ordinary
or commonplace status – the dailiness – the extra-ordinary has come to acquire.
Although this design is directly linked to the testimonial status of their text
and its belonging to the genre of testimonial texts of social empowerment, the
form of the diary seems most appropriate, since, as Sinor mentions, “dailiness
[…] is the single quality that marks the diary as a distinct form of writing”.30
Exposing their daily involvement with extra-ordinary events is essential for
the Freedom Writers since their purpose is to insist on the necessity for this
situation to change. Such a project is achieved through the diary’s repetitive
format which efficiently emphasizes the need for change. Moreover, Spacks’
assumption that dailiness allows for a reassurance about the contours of our
21. Ibid.,48.
22. Ibid., 55.
23. Ibidem, my emphasis.
24. Ibid., 59.
25. Ibid., 48.
26. Ibid., 55.
27. Oxford Dictionary of English, London, Oxford University Press, Second Edition Revised
2006, 614.
28. ������������������������
Freedom Writers’ Motto.
29. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 12.
30. ����������
Jennifer Sinor, art.cit. ,123.
133
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
shared humanity is of undeniable significance both to the students themselves
– though experiencing extra-ordinary events they realize that they are human
beings as anybody else, hence susceptible to hope and act for change – and to
the readers – inducing a necessary empathy for the authors and responsibility
in the process of change.
However, this dailiness is sometimes closely intertwined with larger
events, events which have come to be part of the whole nation’s and possibly
the world’s daily life. Girard contends that journals concentrate on the author’s
private life, but he adds that if larger events are to be mentioned, it would be
done through the specific prism of the author’s place or role in these events.
Yet, Girard remarks that “trying to escape time” is also a characteristic of diary
writing and “an enduring need of human beings”; “it is a function of writing
to help men record what seems to deserve remembrance. Stricken by a fact,
they write it down, so that memory won’t lose its trail”. 31 And Françoise Simonet-Tenant agrees, insisting that copying letters in a diary is symptomatic of “a
distinction of what is going to become the momentous”.32 By the same token,
Sébastien Hubier, in his work Littératures Intimes: les expressions du moi, de l’autobiographie à l’autofiction, observes that personal changes, wich he considers to be
at the heart of the diary practice, are part of contemporary historical changes.
Larger events are consistently mentioned in the different entries of the Freedom
Writers’ Diary, yet, as Girard advocates, these are always presented through the
very specific point of view of the authors and the possible repercussions the
event may have on their life.
Dear Diary, Everybody was talking about Proposition 187 and the planned
walkout in school today.[…] If it passes, the government can take away health
care benefits and any other public program, like school, to all illegal immigrants. I’m scared because it will personally affect my family, since my mom
came here illegally.33
The presence of contemporary historical, larger events within the text fulfills
two specific purposes in the case of the Freedom Writers’ Diary. These larger
events first serve as direct links to the actual spatiotemporal context in which
the journal has been written. The delineation of historical events is part of the
characterization of the diary as it allows both to place the text within history and
to distinguish what the author wishes to remember. Secondly, the presence of
these events reinforces the contextualization of the situation of social injustice
the Freedom Writers seek to denounce. Each of these events is directly linked to
their contemporary social controversies (all of them questioning the very notion
of justice itself) – O.J. Simpson’s trial, Proposition 187, the 1995 Oklahoma City
Bombing, the L.A. riots. By exposing their considerations on such issues, the
students’ aim is not solely to show that these events are part of the memorable
but also that their daily grievances over social injustice and racial violence need,
for everybody’s sake, to be directly addressed.
31. Ibid., 7.
32. Op. cit.
33. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 22.
134
Audrey Louckx
1.4. Diaries are a private activity
“[I]n the narrowest sense of the term”,34 Girard adds. Diaries are, at least
in their primary form, not meant for an audience. They are to be considered as
a dialogue with the self, as what Françoise Simonet-Tenant calls “a sound box
for the soul”;35 the author doesn’t acknowledge the presence of the other. Many
theoreticians seem to disagree with Girard’s rather controversial point of view.
Philippe Lejeune proposes communication as one of the major functions of
the diary in La Pratique du journal personnel. Hubier acknowledges this communicational practice insisting that sometimes the diary itself becomes the author’s
addressee, because “through the diary, the writer seeks to overcome a loneliness
which is both a source of suffering and a source of knowledge”.36 Françoise
Simonet-Tenant adds that talking to one’s journal is akin to talking to oneself.
This intrinsic and seemingly necessary communicational function of the diary
is developed by Pierre Hébert in his study about the different ‘narratees’ of the
journal. These narratees “design[ing] the addressees lying in the text,[…] which
are radically different from the physical addressee [that is] the receiver”37 might
be of two kinds, namely internal – the narrator him or herself – or external – an
addressee who is “obviously ‘condemned to virtuality’”.38 The internal narratee,
according to Hébert, might sometimes be the diary itself. And this practice seems
to be quite extensive: Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic epitomize both the necessary presence of the narratee and the communicational function of the journal
by naming their diaries. In the case of The Freedom Writers, for whom Zlata and
Anne are avowed leading examples, each entry begins by the same formula, as if
the metaphor of the ‘magical ritual’ mentioned by one of Lejeune’s interviewees
in Cher Cahier was here instantly making sense. Each voice is introduced by the
same unchanging address – “Dear Diary” – as if, flouting gender, racial, social
and age differences, the diary was the only place where “people [could] hear […]
[the writers’] voice[s] and [where] [their] opinions were never judged”.39 Likewise,
Del Litto contends that the diary is “not a dialogue between self and self, but
between self and the other; there is an imaginary presence of the other within the
diary”.40 Drawing on this observation, he adds that the expected step to follow
would be publication in which the presence of the other is actually accepted.
The figure of the other in the Freedom Writers’ Diary is central in a most
unexpected way. Interestingly enough, the presence of the other – that is to say
the external narratee – seems to become more and more vivid as the text and its
nature evolve. Once again, the choral form of the work underlines the notion
of otherness. The audience hears the voice of each author individually. ‘I’ is the
only pronoun through which narrators can talk. Yet, this ‘I’ is in constant com34. �������
Alain Girard, Le Journal intime, 4.
35. Art. cit.
36. �����������
Sébastien Hubier, Littératures intimes : Les expressions du moi, de l’autobiographie à l’autofiction,
Paris, Armand Colin, 2003, p.60.
37. ��������
Pierre Hebert, « Les Narrataires du Journal Intime : L’exemple de Lionel Groulx », in: The
French Review, 2001, 59, 6, 850.
38. Ibid., quoting Rousset, 851.
39. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 22.
40. Victor Del Litto, in: Le Journal intime et ses formes littéraires : Actes du colloque de septembre
1975, Paris, Centre d’études Stendhaliennes, 1978, 21.
135
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
munication, in a continuing dialogue with the ‘I’ of the other writers. Several
‘I’s’ seem to converse within the whole text; some diaries actually answer to one
another, offering several perspectives on one same event. Yet if ‘I’ is to represent the self, the pronoun ‘you’ is of course symptomatic of otherness. And it is
through the evolving referents of the ‘you’ pronoun that the actual generic and
functional nature of the Freedom Writers’ text will progressively unravel. Where
the ‘you’ is first understood to represent the diary as an extension of the opening
formula – “Dear Diary, […] I have about four hours before we land in LAX, so
I’m going to sit here and tell you a story”41 – it rapidly comes to represent the
reader himself:
To illustrate this point, picture living in a small town filled with normal people,
just like you. Every day, loaded trains come in, make their deliveries, and leave.
Factories constantly bellow smoke. Then one day, you notice the trains aren’t
making simple deliveries anymore. And the factories aren’t bellowing mere
smoke. Would you rock the boat and speak out, or would you remain silent, as the people
of Auschwitz did?42
This quote might be considered as one of the breaking points in the diaristic nature
of the text. Though the diary keeps the external form of a journal, it comes closer
to the genre of the testimony not only acknowledging the presence of the other but
also insistently calling for his or her collaboration.
1.5. “The author does not deliver his book to the printer”43
Girard, though working exclusively on literary journals, observes nonetheless an evolution in publishing practices. Literary journals were first posthumously published, yet the tendecy evolved in the course of time which indicated
a ‘‘radical change in (the writers’ and editors’) point of view’’.44 He insists that
journals are published “when minds are ripe to grasp the significance of the
testimonies they display. They induce, then, a psychological transformation and
the promotion of a collective realization of the individual’s status in contemporary
society”.45 Though Girard is here describing the crisis of the individual of the
XIXth century, his remarks can easily be enlarged to broader considerations. The
Freedom Writers’ Diary’s purpose is to denounce situations of injustice which seem
to be recurring in contemporary society. This exposure is only possible through
circulation which obviously requires publishing. And it is through the testimonial capacity of the genre of the diary that the Freedom Writers’ denunciation
is possible. By publishing their diary, the Freedom Writers not only engage in
actual social struggle but also display a real confidence in their audience’s capacity to realize the necessity and urgency of such a struggle. Such purposes carry
out Girard’s engagement regarding the capacity of diaries to promote collective
realization.
41. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 179.
42. Ibid., 185, my emphasis.
43. �������
Alain Girard, op.cit., 4.
44. Ibidem.
45. Ibid., XVII, my emphasis.
136
Audrey Louckx
1.6. Interiority is the dominant characteristic of the content of the diary
Girard argues that in the case of intimate diaries, “introversion takes over extraversion in the nature or the mind of the writer”.46 Further on in his description of the
genre, he adds that diaries tend to “intermingle universal tendencies [like] looking for
one’s identity in the twists and turns of a still cherished past, looking for one’s identity
in the complexities of life, [or] constructing one’s personality in accordance with one’s
self representation”.47 And as Steve Rendall contends: “the goal and at the same time
the raison d’être of the journal, its end-point and its beginning hypothesis is the creation
and deployment of that entity writers call, depending on their philosophical convictions
‘self ’ or ‘soul’”.48 This quest for the self is even more fervent in the case of the Freedom
Writers’ Diary. As adolescents, the authors are experiencing a crisis of the self which
often sparks off the practice of journal keeping. Though theoreticians agree that journals might come into existence at any moment in life, both Lejeune and Girard seem
to agree on the importance of Maurice Debesse’s survey of carried out on the practice
of journal writing among adolescents. Debesse declares that what seems to drive young
individuals to the diary is its ease of use to express the inconvenience of adolescence. As
Lejeune remarks “[f]or me, as for most 20th century adolescents, the diary is by definition anti-institutional, it is the place where one recovers and constructs one’s identity against
parents, against school, etc.”.49 This quest for a renewed, more assertive self is ever present through the entries of the Freedom Writers’ Diary. Though the first entries might give
a rather gloomy impression of the students’ self-considerations, the teens rapidly seem
to realize what the “power of the written word”50 might offer them:
Growing up, I always assumed I would either drop out of school or get pregnant. […] Like they say if you’re born in the ‘hood, you’re bound to die in it. So
when Ms G. kept saying that ‘I could do anything’, ‘go anywhere’, ‘be anyone’,
[…] I thought she was crazy. […] How did she expect me to go to college? After
all, I live in the ghetto and my skin is brown. […] In class today, she made us do
a speech about our future goals. […] I began to think that I could teach young
girls like me that they too could ‘be somebody’. […] For the first time I realized
that what people say about living in the ghetto and having brown skin doesn’t
have to apply to me. So when I got home I wrote this poem: They Say, I Say.51
They say I’m brown
I say
I’m proud.
They say I’m not the future of this nation
I say
Stop giving me discrimination
Instead
I’m gonna use my education
To help build the human nation.
They say I’m brown
I say
I’m proud.
They say I only know how to cook
I say
I know how to write a book
So
Don’t judge me by the way I look.
46. Ibid., 4.
47. Ibid., 36.
48. ������
Steve Rendall, “On Diaries”, in: Rhetoric Review, 2002, 21, 2, 60.
49. Philippe Lejeune, Le Moi des demoiselles : enquête sur le journal de jeune fille, Paris, Seuil, 1993,
19, my emphasis.
50. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 141.
51. Ibid.,���������
203-204.
137
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
Through their writing, the students manage to grasp the evolution of their selfesteem and realize that self-respect goes hand in hand with empowerment and the
possibility to go against society’s prejudices and administrative authoritarian dead
ends.
1.7. Diaries stretch over a significant time span
Girard considers that a “usually extroverted”52 man might come to keep a
diary because of a specific emotional shock or crisis; the diary will then develop
over a rather short period (whether for a few days or a few months). According to
Girard the diary “even if it doesn’t cover life as a whole, endures and lingers with
a rather great regularity”.53 Similarly, Steve Rendall, trying to answer the question
of the continuity of the diaristic activity, insists on the fact that the “only ‘natural’
terminus”54 should be the death of the diarist. The diary “cannot therefore, include
its own end; it cannot conclude”.55 And quoting the last words of André Gide’s
journal, Rendall adds: “there is no closing gesture, no attempt at summary or final
judgment”56. Yet, interestingly enough, Lejeune in both his surveys on the practice
of journal keeping asks the question of a possible conclusion or end of the journal,
as he seems to assume a somehow necessary closing process. In the case of the
Freedom Writers’ Diary, the diary comes to an end on a very specific closing event, i.e.
graduation. The diary in this case is the diary of a specific endeavor which implies
the quest for a renewed empowered self. The time span is therefore limited and
socially constructed, as it represents the four years of High School education. And
contrary to Gide’s, the last entry is definitely an attempt to both summarize and
bring a conclusion to the project:
I’m going to miss all of those things, but what I’m definitely going to miss the
most is our classroom, Room 203. That room was not only a room, though, it
was our attic, our basement, and our ‘kick it spot’, like Miss G. used to call it.
[…] The room is definitely never going to be the same. […] It will probably
never see a group of kids who went from little bad-asses to role models, proving everyone, even themselves, wrong. Our lives were shaped in this room
and now it will never again be the place of people crying, hugging, hating,
commiserating, or tolerating, but who knows? It’s always been said that ‘All
good things come to an end’, but I’m learning that they don’t have to.57
2. Testimonial Text of Social Empowerment
The Freedom Writer’s Diary might then be defined as the story of an educational
venture. Several theoreticians and educationalists seem to favor the use of the diary
as a means for education. Philippe Lejeune in Le Moi des demoiselles insists on the fact
that “the journal is an educational practice among others. It has to contribute to
moral education (as a daily self-examination) and it has to teach writing (as a com52. �������
Alain Girard, Le journal intime, 4.
53. Ibid., 5.
54. �������
Steve Rendall, “On Diaries”, 61.
55. Ibidem.
56. Ibidem.
57. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 271.
138
Audrey Louckx
position exercise)”.58 Lejeune is of course depicting a century-old practice, yet the
diary as a writing exercise is still part of several contemporary education programs,
though probably in different forms. Sandra Kerka in her article about journal writing and adult learning insists that journal writing is “[a] useful learning tool[…]”
which allows for specific educational goals such as “coming to voice, the capacity
for critical reflection, and making meaning”.59 By the same token, Roger Hiemstra
lists numerous benefits of journal writing for educational purposes. These benefits include both personal – self-development, intuition and self-expression, stress
reduction and health benefits60 – and social skills – problem solving, reflection and
critical thinking.61 In the case of the Freedom Writers, the educational purpose
seems obvious. These students have first been assigned the task of keeping a diary
in the classroom environment putting emphasis on the writing exercise, but the
other benefits rapidly surface. Examples of coming to voice abound and self-development as well as moral self-examination are at the heart of their texts as demonstrated in some of the examples above.
Yet, the most interesting angle of their approach to diary writing might appear as unexpected: “I would like the opportunity now to educate people on what is
happening in my ‘America’ because until this ‘undeclared war’ has ended, I am not
free!”62 The diary as a means for its author’s education is now turned inside out. The
reader, here, is the one who needs to be educated. The text, as it puts forward the
perlocutionary aspect of the speech act it carries out, becomes an indirect directive,
encouraging the reader to react to the content of the testimonies and to act in the
real world. The Freedom Writers’ diary literally enacts Spack’s assumptions that commonplace diaries emphasize the reader’s rather than the author’s role. Interestingly
enough, this perlocutionary approach – that is the actual effect upon the actions,
thoughts and feelings of the addressee – can be likened to Sébasien Hubier’s first
project of a generic typology of the Littératures Intimes. Hubier distinguishes firstperson pieces of writing which “do” – which try to perform something by transmitting values to the readers – from first person pieces of writing which “are” – offering a descriptive narration.63 Hubier thus questions the term ‘intime’ and reopens
the long-lasting debate of publication.
In the Freedom Writers’ case, questions about publishing and having the
diary shared with the other which seemed so problematic for usual journaux intimes
are nullified. Publishing is unavoidable and fundamental. The necessity for publication is overtly mentioned in different entries of the diary as first shown in Erin
Gruwell’s entry n° 6.64 Such written speech acts acknowledge a generic shift in the
text. I already mentioned this generic shift through my approach of the evolution
58. Philippe Lejeune, Le Moi des demoiselles, 20.
59. ��������
Sandra Kerka, “Journal Writing and Adult Learning”, in Eric Digest, Columbus, ERIC
Clearinghouse on Adult Career and Vocational Education, 1996b, (ERIC Document Reproduction
Service No. ED 399 413), [online], <http://www.ericdigest.org/1997-2/journal.htm>
60. Interestingly, Hiemstra is here reaching conclusions akin to the ones mentioned by James
W. Pennebaker, regarding writing as a means for emotional disclosure. See Opening Up: The Healing
Power of Expressing Emotions, New York, The Guilford Press, 1997.
61. �������
Roger Hiermstra, “Uses and Benefits of Journal Writing”, in: New Directions for Adult and
Continuing Education, 2001, 90, 24.
62. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writers Diary, 79.
63. Sébastien Hubier, Littératures intimes, 30.
64. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writer’s Diary, 139.
139
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
of the use of the ‘you’ pronoun, which proves that the reader is then considered as an intrinsic part of the writing process. The need for this generic shift is
enunciated by the very educational purpose of the text. The actual implementation
of this didactic purpose is twofold. First, the Freedom Writers’ text can easily be
associated with the genre of the diary though it displays several discrepancies with
some of the previously listed characteristics. Yet, its most notable similarity to the
genre is the fact that the Freedom Writers’ writing serves as a didactic means for
empowerment and self-development through self-disclosure and self-examination.
When composing their diary, the students realize its didactical potential. As they
managed to apply its educational process to themselves, they wish to bring their
work a step further. By editing their texts and publishing their diaries, they hope
to apply their didactic capacity to their audience. Their purpose is to inform about
their current situation and the urgent need for change. The educational purpose of
the text is now to induce on the part of the audience commitment to a cause and
actual action.
As I have now delineated the perlocutionary capacity, i.e. educational purpose,
of the Freedom Writers’ and other testimonial texts of social empowerment; the
question of its possible efficiency is still to be addressed. It is when coming to terms
with the texts’ reception that their need for the strong basis of renown efficient
literary genres overtly develops. Though testimonial texts of social empowerment
have not yet come under the scrutiny of literary criticism, their post-colonial match,
the Latin-American genre of Testimonio enjoyed a wide coverage among scholars.
Most of them, unfortunately, appear quite pessimistic regarding their actual efficiency and impact on the readers. Yet, Kimberly Nance, in her book Can Literature
Promote Justice?, seems to suspect otherwise. Basing her assumptions on psychologist
Melvin Lerner’s findings in The Belief in a Just World in which he contends that some
texts can promote social change, Nance insists that since “[b]elief in justice is
widespread and powerfully motivating, readers are willing to act upon it, and […]
can be motivated by textual depictions of injustice”.65 She offers then a textual
and rhetorical approach of different kinds of testimonies which will allow a lesser
or greater influence on their reader’s actions. She distinguishes between “forensic,
epideictic and deliberative testimonies”66: each of these displays a specific way of
presenting the situation of injustice, the figure of the sufferer and the addressee.
In the case of the Freedom Writers, the diaristic format appears as a very efficient
option for representing the different features which are mentioned by Nance. She
considers that Testimonios and other texts seeking the greatest collaboration from
their readers have to “work[…] through persuasion rather than through force”,67
thus placing empathy in the foreground. In this sense, the diary format appears
to be of some help, since, as Kerka mentions, journals and diaries are “text[s]
written in the [author’s] authentic voice, […] [and such a] personal engagement
adds a necessary affective element to the […] process”.68 Nance states that testimonials seeking actual action on the part of their readers tend to take a mixed
rhetorical format. According to Nance, readers are not as willing to act as might
65. �������������
Kimberly A. Nance, Can Literature Promote Justice?, 67.
66. Ibid., 23.
67. Ibid., 75.
68. ��������
Sandra Kerka, “Journal Writing and Adult Learning”.
140
Audrey Louckx
be expected and she adds that “readers tend to be suspicious of victims who
appear ‘too good’69 as might be expected from each of the three other models,
consequently in testimonials seeking persuasion through empathy “suffering [is]
borne and revolutions made by insistently ordinary and fallible people”.70 The
authors sincerely display their own ordinariness, as they confess their weaknesses
as ordinary human beings. Such sincerity in self-descriptions appears as the best
way to trigger empathy and consequently to gain commitment.
In the case of the Freedom Writers’ Diary, the ordinary dailiness of the
diaristic form appears to be the best ally of the authors. When describing
commonplace diaries, Patricia Meyer Spacks asserts that they grant readers
a renewed assurance about the contours of the humanity they share with
the author, thus sparking off empathy. She considers this sharing as a way
through which one “can redefine authenticity”. 71 Spacks’ approach of authenticity with regard to diaries is of tremendous importance in the case of the
Freedom Writers’ Diary. As an instance of testimonial texts of social empowerment seeking empathy and commitment on the part of their readers, the text’s
use of authentic descriptions needs to be as persuasive as possible. Sébastien
Hubier states that one of the actual projects of the Littératures Intimes is to
recount one’s intimacy with sincerity. Yet, as he just introduced the notion of
sincerity, he rapidly comes to nuance it with a need for authenticity. According
to Hubier, authenticity does not necessarily imply sincerity: “authenticity is a
specific form of [sincerity] through which one can give a genuine self-image by
mistake or by mystification”.72 This genuine self-image is of course what Nance
describes through her mixed rhetorical approach and the description of the way
in which the witness is presented. As mentioned before, witnesses have to be
presented as authentic human beings:
those who act [in this case, who write] are not sure, superhuman, and saintly,
but fallible, sometimes depressed and often confused. They recount moments
of discouragement and indecision as well as their convictions and hopes, and
display their own ordinary desires and prosaic displeasure. The self-presentation of these speakers is often marked by a thoroughgoing sense of tension
– a conflict that is as much personal as it is social.73
This inner conflict is considered an intrinsic feature of diary writing. Diaries being
a “sound box for the soul”, interiority is the most important aspect of their content
and consequently permits the representation of confusion, fallibility, and plain humanity. Examples of these personal and social conflicts abound in the Freedom
Writers’ text, as the authors insist that their first encounter with social injustice and
their hostile environment is often dispirited and gloomy:
Dear Diary, You’re going to be disappointed in me. Actually I’m more disappointed in myself for the way I’m tricking people into believing that I’m so-
69. �������������
Kimberly A. Nance, Can Literature Promote Justice?, 75.
70. Ibid., 6.
71. ����������
Patricia Meyer-Spacks, “How to Read a Diary?”, 55.
72. �����������
Sébastien Hubier, Littératures intimes, 35.
73. �������������
Kimberly A. Nance, Can Literature Promote Justice ?, 94.
141
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
mething I’m not. […] I am a living lie. […] I can’t keep on hiding the fact that
I’m an alcoholic. […] I know I need help, but how do I go about getting it?74
Dear Diary, Sorry, diary, I was going to try not to do it tonight, but the
little bag of white powder is calling my name. […] [Miss G.] shouldn’t trust
anyone who steals money from their family, begs friends for change, and digs
through her couch just to support her drug habit. […] When I hear cheesy
clichés like ‘Hugs not drugs’ or ‘Be smart, don’t start’, it makes me want to
do it more. […] Come on, get real, how boring! Quite honestly, I’m just not
ready to quit yet.75
There were twenty angry boys against one. […] they started kicking, and
punching him in the ribs, face, and anywhere else they could reach. […] The
boy lay unconscious, his arms, legs, and back were all broken. I watched as
he was taken to the hospital and watched as the culprits were arrested. ‘Why
didn’t I do anything to help him?’ I asked myself. Maybe it was because I was
scared of the consequences. Most likely, I would have been mauled by the
crowd. Even though I could have been hurt, I wish I had done something.76
Nance’s mixed rhetorical model of testimonials present the ordinary, commonplace
authenticity Spacks mentions with Hubier’s sincerity. Its strength holds in the sincerity through which the witnesses tell each episode in which they are confronted
with injustice. Drawing on the genre of diary writing, testimonial texts of social
empowerment derive their efficiency from the characteristics of authenticity and
sincerity intrinsic to the fundamental interiority symptomatic of a genre which has
already been time tested.
Before concluding, it seems necessary to dwell a little more upon the notions of publishing and editing themselves. In this case, the intimate diary becomes
the diary of an editing, publishing and social project. Students edited the entries
themselves, and this process presents the genesis of an anticipated impact on the
readers:
Dear Diary, ‘As his penis twirled in my mouth, thought of the popcorn he promised me ran through my mind…’ As I read these words, I began to wonder
who the author of this story was. My mind began to think, ‘Damn I’ve been
through the same thing’. […] Maybe someone will feel the same way after
learning about my experience. I wanted to reach out to her to let her know she
wasn’t alone. I wanted to tell her I know how she feels, to show sympathy, to
be a true friend to her. I never found her. But now, I know that I’m not alone
– and that has made a difference.77
This excerpt epitomizes the Freedom Writers’ hope to make a difference thanks to
the sharing of their extra-ordinary experiences. The excerpt also raises the question
of anonymity, since the students when editing do not know the author of the entry.
The only name appearing at the beginning of the entries is Erin Gruwell’s. She
explains her decision of keeping the students’ anonymity as follows:
Since their fears are legitimate, I need to let them keep their anonymity. Some
of their diary entries deal with subjects like murder and molestation. By using
numbers rather than names when we compile our diary, I think they’ll feel
74. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writer’s Diary, 67.
75. Ibid., 99.
76. Ibid., 118.
77. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Writer’s Diary, 151.
142
Audrey Louckx
more comfortable and it will probably be safer for all of us. To ensure that no
one embellishes or sensationalizes their stories, I’m going to ask them to sign
a code of honor.78
The entries have then all been numbered, no name appears. For most of them,
it is possible thanks to the content to decide the gender and the race of the
writer. Nevertheless, and though the excerpts are dealing with very personal
matters, emotions and questioning, the possible apprehension of the author is
rather limited. Apart from Gruwell’s and her students’ concern for their own
security, anonymity serves also another purpose namely that of “illustrat[ing]
the universality of the […] [students’] experiences” 79. The decision to number
each diary entry rather than attach a name to them allowed the students to
share their life experiences freely without inhibition. This concern for universality and freedom of expression is linked to the social impact the authors
hope to achieve. Again, the pronoun ‘I’ appears as the catalyst of the shared
humanity of anonymity the aim of which is to inspire empathy and eventually
action.
The concept of anonymity has been redefined by Fredric Jameson in his
approach to the testimonial text. He considers this instance of the anonymous
author as a “good anonymity”80 suggesting not “namelessness, facelessness [or
the] indinstinction of the mass” but “what political people celebrate as genuine
democracy or plebeianization”.81 In the case of testimonial texts, anonymity
does not mean “the loss of a name, but – quite paradoxically – the multiplication
of proper names”82 epitomizing the association and collaboration of individuals,
a new “social concept […], a new conception of collectivity, of collective life”83.
And interestingly enough, Girard seems to share a similar point of view in his
conception of the persona within diaries, showing the possible social impact of
diaries as documents of a time or civilization:
To put it differently, each of them represents an individuality, a precisely
defined person, irreducible to any other, and all the more distinct since their
physical and mental organization was more complex. But it is only through
varied personas that it is possible to grasp an image of the person, as seen or felt
by the people of a specific time or civilization.84
This ‘image of the person’ encompassing individuals expands the humanistic view
of the witnesses of testimonial texts of social empowerment. Seeking empowerment for their community, their conception of collective life and collaboration is
such that their venture for empowerment comes to be broadened to society as a
whole.
78. Ibid., 140.
79. Ibid., 6.
80. ���������
Fredric Jameson, “On Literary and Cultural Import-Substitution in the Third World: The
Case of the Testimonio”, in: Georg M. Gugelberger (ed.), The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and
Latin America, Durham, Duke University Press, 1996, 185.
81. Ibidem.
82. Ibidem.
83. Ibid., 186.
84. �������
Alain Girard, Le journal intime, 487, my emphasis.
143
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
*
*
*
In contemporary American culture, testimonial texts of social empowerment
have been flourishing for the last two decades. Borrowing their miscellaneous formats to previously existing literary genres, they nonetheless impart to the texts
a generic shift which unmistakably puts forward the actual social purpose their
authors wish to enact. In the case of the Freedom Writers, the social minority,
these students suffering from daily discrimination and violence opted for the diary
as a means of cultural expression. The diary, through its intimate yet also didactic
characteristics allowed them to meet their hopes for self-development and psychological empowerment. Not content with their own empowerment, they decided to
extend their struggle for education and emancipation to society as a whole by inducing readers to take actual social action. Drawing on notions of authenticity and
dailiness displayed by diary writing, they managed to create persuasive testimonials
which put forward the necessity for all of us to carry on believing in a just world.
Through their “tropes of persuasion”85, testimonial texts of social empowerment
seek to show how literature has the power to change and promote social justice:
I have learned that it doesn’t matter if your inspiration comes from negative
or positive events. The most important thing is to learn and go on. Twenty or
thirty years from now, when we have accomplished world peace, when we have
succeeded in ending racism and intolerance, the world will remember that the
Freedom Writers have kept their promise.86
Audrey Louckx
Université Libre de Bruxelles
audrey.louckx@ulb.ac.be
85. Kimberly Nance, Can Literature Promote Justice ?, 22.
86. ������
Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, The Freedom Write’s Diary, 264.
© Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties 2012