The Insiders and Outsiders of Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers shows the viewer that all people can feel like both insiders and outsiders. This film focuses on insiders being in groups related to race, but hits on many more levels. The first view we see of the courtyard at Wilson High has everyone in their own segregated groups or tribes. One quick look and you can see that the groups are separated by race and as the character, Eva narrates the names of the groups like little Cambodia, little Tijuana, etc. Within the groups these people feel like insiders. Everyone in their groups is of the same ethnicity and they are raised to stick up for their “own kind.” They are also just surviving the ghetto life together – doing what they have to do to stay on the inside. A person not in their group, they consider an outsider. They are all outsiders to each other.

The new teacher at the school, Mrs. Gruwell, is an outsider on many levels. At first she is an outsider to the staff since she is a new teacher. As she enters the classroom she is made to be considered an outsider as she was raised wealthy and is highly educated. Wearing her pearls and business suit and talking about a book the kids can’t comprehend, the students quickly show her she is an outsider. She was not even an insider to the only white kid in her class. He was not wealthy or in the honors classes. Later in the movie she is again an outsider as a teacher who wants to fight for her students and their learning while the others teacher argue that her students will drop out before junior year and are not worth better reading materials. This teacher, who thought she would be in an insider group with the other staff, begins to become more of an insider with her students. This in turn loses respect from her staff as she is clearly an outsider to their group, but this is also the point when she is making the biggest impact on her students’ learning.

This part of the movie is where I saw the theme of insiders/outsiders as well as identity come together. At some point, the students start enjoying Mrs. Gruwell’s lessons and she becomes an insider to them. This allows the class to bond as a whole making the classroom their “inside” group no matter what race or intelligence they were. This is also the point where I feel true identities were discovered. These kids who thought they knew themselves as gangsters and thugs and hard asses realized that they had an identity outside of that environment. This seems like something I can add to my paper about the relationship between culture and identity!