Dear Freedom Writer

October 1, 2021

With We Should All Be Feminists, award-winning, multi-million-copy best-selling MacArthur author Adichie offers an illustrated journal that guides readers on their own feminist journeys. Arce, who worked hard to suppress her accent after immigrating to the United States from Mexico only to be told You Sound Like a White Girl, now rejects assimilation as an illusory and ultimately racist goal meant to keep her from belonging and instead argues for honoring one's culture; currently, she's collaborating with America Ferrera to develop Ferrera's My (Underground) American Dream for television (75,000-copy first printing). Following up 1999's No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Freedom Writers Diary, which inspired a film starring Hilary Swank and an Emmy award-winning documentary, Dear Freedom Writer is a compilation by contemporary Freedom Writers and teacher Gruwell of 50 more stories representing a new generation of high school students. As musician/activist Henry looks back on All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep--they thought he wasn't sufficiently polite when discussing racism or doubted it even existed--he argues that social justice will be achieved not through civil conversation or diversity hires but more direct ways of disrupting racial inequality and violence. With The Antiracist Deck, No. 1 New York Times best-selling antiracism champion Kendi presents not a book but a pack of 100 cards, each with a conversation starter--When did you first become aware of racism? When did you first become aware of your race? What does "resistance" mean to you? --meant to get people talking. In On the Line, Pitkin recalls working as a newly hired organizer for UNITE, an international garment workers union, to unionize Arizona's industrial laundry factories with the help of a second-shift immigrant factory worker pseudonymously named Alma Gomez-Garcia. A political reporter for the Daily Beast who has spent the last several years tracking QAnon, Sommer explains what it is, why it has gained traction, what dangers it poses, and how to shake adherents loose from its dogma in Trust the Plan (100,000-copy first printing). Chief economics correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Timiraos argues in Trillion Dollar Triage that the pandemic did not result in economic collapse owing to the efforts of Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (60,000-copy first printing). New York Times reporter Williamson's Sandy Hook reveals the ongoing tragedy of the killing of 26 people--including 20 children--at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, with the parents of young victims harassed online, stalked, and even shot at and the very truth of the massacre denied by a group of conspiracy theorists whom she sees as profit motivated.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 31, 2022
In this moving follow-up to 1999’s The Freedom Writers Diary, educator Gruwell takes a vivid look at the issues facing teenagers today. In 1994, Gruwell drew on the example of Anne Frank’s Holocaust diary to encourage her high school students in Long Beach, Calif., to start recording their thoughts and feelings. The success of the initial project led to the creation of the Freedom Writers Foundation (named for the Freedom Riders of the civil rights era), which provides teachers with “innovative, student-centered, project-driven lesson plans and an engaging social-emotional curriculum.” In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the foundation set up an online classroom where students could “bare their souls... so that others could bear witness to their plight and help them heal.” The collection contains letters from 50 students writing from the Gaza Strip, New Zealand, Rwanda, the U.S., and elsewhere about dealing with Asperger’s syndrome, internalized homophobia, racism, a best friend’s suicide, and other thorny subjects. Each letter is accompanied by a compassionate reply from a teacher or one of the original Freedom Writers who has dealt with a similar issue. Shot through with stories of violence, loss, and redemption, this is a raw and emotional snapshot of growing up during a global pandemic.