Students Find That Their Words Are Their Bond

Mauricio Becerra and Stephen Krupa, former classmates at Woodrow Wilson High in Long Beach, sat together at a Barnes & Noble, marveling over their new status: 19-year-old co-authors. Both are the first in their families to go to college. And now they are among 150 other Wilson grads--many of them once written off as hopeless students--who are about to see their journal-style chronicles of a unique classroom program go on sale nationally.

Published by Doubleday, their 281-page book--with a narrative thread written by their beloved former English teacher, Erin Gruwell--is called “The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Group of Extraordinary Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them.” It features student entries from their four-year journey together, from their first day in class to graduation in June 1998--a milestone many of the kids never imagined reaching.

“I can’t believe it’s actually a book,” said Becerra, fingering a copy, on whose cover he is pictured with Gruwell and other students. The racially and economically diverse group--some so poor they have gone without basic utilities in their homes, while others have two-story guest houses behind their homes--dubbed themselves the Freedom Writers in honor of the 1960s civil rights group.

Fresh out of college, Gruwell was not yet a full-time instructor when she met up with her first English class--mostly hostile students. The youths dismissed Gruwell as a preppy Caucasian in pearls, expecting to loathe her as much as they did one another. One day she intercepted a degrading caricature of a black student, and she furiously compared that underlying prejudice to the roots of the Holocaust. Nobody knew what she was talking about. From then on, her standard lesson plan was abandoned for one whose theme would be tolerance. District approval of the new lesson plan allowed her to work with most of the same students all four years.

As they read such books as “Schindler’s List” and “The Color Purple,” the students slowly became a single group bound by the discovery that writing could liberate them from personal strife--violent neighborhoods, poverty, family illness or simple alienation. Their inspiration: teen diarist Anne Frank.

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Book editors were especially taken with the Freedom Writers’ perspective and the community work the group had performed, including counseling children against gang membership and on the importance of staying in school.

“I think the message is tolerance, and understanding where people come from. I think that was the greatest lesson these kids learned by reading about other teenagers who also were surrounded by violence,” said Doubleday spokeswoman Sandy Yuen.

The Freedom Writers are not named in the book to afford them utmost security in sharing their unvarnished and often painful stories. A handful of the revelations indict friends or family or self with tales of crime, drug use, sexual abuse or other transgressions. By law, Gruwell would have been forced to report some of it to authorities, undermining the larger lesson: writing as catharsis.

But a weekly support group was set up with a counselor for the students suffering sexual abuse, and a police officer was brought in to encourage the victims to report the abuse. At least one student shares the loss of virginity, and others a broader loss of innocence, but there are also jubilant moments that come as their four years together progress.

About 5,000 Long Beach students will receive free copies of the book compliments of the Long Beach Barnes & Noble, which has championed the young authors; the store has hosted numerous book readings and community events at which area students have met with Freedom Writers to discuss writing and reading. The chain is supporting the Freedom Writers on a national level as well. Company President Tom Tolworthy invited Gruwell to address the annual convention of store managers in Phoenix last week to help promote sales. Proceeds will be donated to the Tolerance Educational Fountain, which was set up to pay for the Freedom Writers’ college tuition. Every Freedom Writer is enrolled in college.

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Their biggest benefactor has been the publicity-shy John Tu, founder of Kingston Technology Corp. of Fountain Valley, best known for giving $100 million to employees from proceeds of the company’s sale a few years ago. Tu learned of the students and their teacher from an employee who knew Gruwell and has supported the students financially and personally ever since, but always in ways that reward the teens for achieving goals.

For instance, he has financed a documentary now in the works by two filmmakers best known for their Sundance Film Festival winner “Genghis Blues” to teach the students film production and how students film production and help them retain rights to their story. (Several major studios have asked about buying the rights.)

In the final diary entry of the book, one student writes: “We weren’t supposed to make it. But look at us now, the sure-to-drop-out kids are sure to reach higher education. No one would have thought of the ‘bad-asses’ as high school graduates--as any kind of graduates.

“Yet, in four years we will be college graduates. Our names will be on the alumni list of Columbia, Princeton, Stanford and even Harvard. . . . I remember back in our freshman year, people still didn’t understand the importance of a pen instead of a gun. They were always either getting shot or jumped, sometimes they were even the jumper. . . . Looking back, I can’t believe that those same diverse kids who refused to speak to each other are today’s Freedom Writers . . . the same Freedom Writers who became a family. I wonder how we are going to follow up on this one?”

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A national book tour launches Tuesday with a signing and author reception from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach; parking at lot No. 12. More information: (562) 431-2253.