“When Diverse Worlds Come Together" with Erin Gruwell
“When Diverse Worlds Come Together”
with Erin Gruwell
As it turns out, dreams really do come true.
I was 23-years-old when I was first introduced to Erin Gruwell’s story in the 2007 feature film Freedom Writers. I remember being enamored with Erin’s story; how she used writing as a tool for healing and bridge building in a Long Beach, California English classroom filled with at-risk youth and racial tensions in light of the Rodney King riots. Not only did 100% of Erin’s students go on to graduate from high school, but they also became co-authors of the New York Times bestselling book, The Freedom Writers Diary. Following the film, Erin went on to found the Freedom Writers Foundation, dedicated to “provid[ing] educators with tools to empower all students to succeed” (www.freedomwritersfoundation.org). The Foundations’ efforts reach worldwide.
Erin is a prime example of authentic beauty, of persevering to bring about wholeness and inspiration in the midst of brokenness. She has grit and fiercely fights to highlight the innate beauty in others. It was a dream come true to meet Erin (via Skype), a mentor of mine for years. I no doubt believe that she will very soon be a mentor of yours as well.
The Interview
Audio engineering: McGinty Media
THE INTERVIEW transcript
Melissa: So if you don't mind, I'll just dive into the questions, or else I'll seriously talk to you all hour about other things.
Erin: Okay.
Melissa: Is that okay with you?
Erin: Sure, absolutely.
Melissa: Okay. I'm curious how you define beauty.
Erin: I think because I was a philosophy and English undergrad, I think for me everything about beauty is those internal traits of humility and justice and being a humble servant. It's hard living in Los Angeles where the images that we see on television and in movies and magazines are counter to my internal beliefs. But I really dug deep when I was initially with the Freedom Writers, because most of my students are students that are not represented in Disney shows or on the cover of Teen Vogue. When they were teenagers at that time, I don't feel that the media was as progressive, as integrating and being inclusive with different shapes and sizes and colors and hues. For me, it was really important to focus on all of those internal traits for young women who are African American, Latina, and Asian American.
As we progressed 20 years later, you can see "Crazy Rich Asians" or "The Black Panther" or "Jane the Virgin" and some of these shows that are more inclusive with different ethnicities. But we talked a lot about stereotypes, and what we had to do was really look at stereotypes head-on and figure out culturally. For African American women, it was really difficult 20 or 25 years ago with shades and hues. The darker a young woman felt, the more alienated she felt in the world of beauty.
There was a horrific group called Jack and Jill. It was an African American subculture, like a sorority group. The subtext for Jack and Jill for young women was if your skin was lighter than a brown paper bag, then you would be accepted, which is horrific. I had mostly students who were much darker in their melatonin. Same thing with Latinas. If you looked more European, like your conquestors, Spanish and Portuguese, you might be more embraced than if you had indigenous skin color.
Also for my Asian American students, most of my Asian American students were folks either who were Vietnamese or Cambodian. They didn't have some of those traits of royalty, when we would bind feet of Asian women. For us, it was really important for us to dive deep and talk about what existed in society, those very negative portrayals, because our story is so foundationally dealing with inequality and intolerance and racism. A lot of those -isms are about your perception of yourself and body issues.
I also had a lot of young women who had been victims of sexual abuse. What we found, as you know therapeutically, often times young women who have been victims can either go where they become hyper sexualized or they gain a lot of weight to not be attractive to a perpetrator. I had a lot of women who dealt with eating disorders, whether they were diagnosed as obese or young women who were anorexic and bulimic.
The issue of beauty was something that we dealt with then and it's something we still deal with, because we want to be good role models to any young person that we currently serve as we travel. For me, it's always going back to internal issues of beauty: your spirit, your values, your ethics, your morals, and not exterior factors.
Melissa: Yeah. That’s so good. Just out of curiosity, have you seen any shifts with any of these struggles with students getting better in any way? It's probably hard to objectively gauge that. But I guess over that 20-year course, have you noticed any positive shifts or any shifts whatsoever?
Erin: I think with our group, yes. With society, gradually. I think I had to create a hate-free zone that there would be no body shaming. I would be vigilant and call it out if it happened. For me, it was being overly effusive always to my young women, how beautiful they were and hugging them and making them feel value and of worth, and then modeling that to young men. Make sure that these are your sisters and treat them as such.
What I love about Freedom Writers is they are so verbal and almost overly verbose about, "Oh my God, you look so good," and, "Oh, you're so sexy." We're a very demonstrative group because of that. That is…we've built each other up. I think that when you hear it enough, you get to feel it.
I think what's been hard though is the perception, that gradual change in society. Like I said, the media is often shamed into making a difference. So whenever there's a horrific crisis or there's a controversy, you will see that shift. I just wish it was more organic and more natural and it wasn't reactionary. For us, it was very organic and very proactive. This is what beauty means to us. I think in magazines, television, and movies, it's always after there is some kind of horrific crisis.
Melissa: Thank you for creating that kind of environment. I so appreciate when people create those, like you said, hate-free zone, including about our bodies.
Erin: We came up with this ... I'm an English teacher at heart, so everything is a metaphor and analogy, but we came up with a beautiful tagline that often the Freedom Writers will sign on a book if someone comes up and wants an autograph. The line was, "When diverse worlds come together, beauty is inevitable." It's this kind of dot dot dot, here's the beauty that awaits us. We really embrace the idea of diversity being of all different shapes. It could be ethnicity or creed or body size or shape or skin color. I think that's really important.
We often say that the Freedom Writers are as colorful as a box of crayons. That's really important to understand there is that beauty in something as simple as a box of crayons. It's colorful and bright. We model that. I hope that it rubs off on those that we serve. We work with teachers globally now, and we're always trying to teach them about embracing that and inclusivity. We fought really hard in the feature film to model that diversity and not hire Disney kids and not hire kids from Nickelodeon. That's something that usually a studio will go to, with the exception of just two or three young folks who had some experience in the entertainment industry, 95% of the kids who were hired were actually real teenagers, 14, 15, and 16 years old who had never had an acting class in their life.
Melissa: Wow.
Erin: That was our way to reflect this is what my classroom looked like. We're not going to hire Miley Cyrus or Ariana Grande. We're hiring real people. Actually, for the lead, the girl who was in contention for Eva's role was the young girl who was in Spy Kids. I was like, "No, people recognize her." She's a very pretty young woman, not that the young woman who played Eva was not, but the young woman who played Eva, which is my student, Maria, was from the Bronx, and she's Puerto Rican. She was an up and comer. She wasn't a Hollywood starlet.
It was really important for us to kind of draw a line in the sand that if you're going to make a movie about my students, this can't be High School Musical. These kids can't break out in song and dance, pirouettes in the middle of a movie with their washboard abs. For us to be able to draw a line in the sand, to fight that fight, and to win was a really big deal for us. That was a hard nut for Paramount Studios and MTV to swallow initially, because we weren't getting the sexy MTV kids. I felt really proud that we won that battle.
Melissa: Yes. So important. I'm interested to know your answer to the next question, given that it sounds like beauty is a part of your tagline. Where do you see beauty in the world?
Erin: You know, it's so funny. I was telling someone yesterday. We always go to juvenile halls throughout the year, but especially on Christmas Eve. It's like our destination. We do so deliberately, because disproportionately so many young folks who are incarcerated are of minority groups, African American, Latina, being specifically for the girl's unit and African American and Latino for the boy's unit. So many of those kids are foster kids. We found that foster youth, the older they get, the harder it is to get adopted and become a part of forever families. The older they get, especially when they're young kids of color, are just part of the system. Often times that system becomes juvenile hall.
My friends are always like, "Why do you want to spend the holidays in juvenile hall?" I believe this, it is the most beautiful place. I feel like I can say that with great certainty, because I have traveled to all 50 states, 25 countries, and I've been to the most beautiful cathedrals. I've been to the Vatican. I've seen the most incredibly synagogues or the most impressive mosques in the Middle East. The closest I've ever felt to divinity is truly in these juvenile halls, even though it smells like bleach, and there's creepy crawlies, and there's usually some kind of lice outbreak. It's where hope lives or where light can strike at any moment.
For me, it's searching for beauty in places that others would not stereotype as beautiful. It's the twinkle in an eye or the nod or the ah-ha gesture, like “I got it.” For me, it's searching it out, going to places where you wouldn't necessarily believe it exists. When you find it, it's like lightning in a bottle. For me, beauty is that internal light in a dark place.
Melissa: Yeah, thank you. So the next question, I don't know if you could answer similarly, but I'm interested to ask it still. The question is about brokenness and about maybe an incident of brokenness that you've experienced or are experiencing, and then if in the midst of that brokenness you've experienced beauty. So similar kind of to what you said, but I don't know if there were other thoughts that come to mind on that question.
Erin: Absolutely. I'm going to use an amazing metaphor from actually one of my Freedom Writers. I'll hold up her picture right here. She's on the cover of the book. But Sue Ellen is self-proclaimed very broken. She has experienced every kind of abuse, whether it was verbal, physical, and sexual. She was homeless. And as an adult, because I encouraged her and not forced her to go to therapy, was able to discover that she had dyslexia and ADHD and is bipolar. Those are all things that she was able to discover through therapy and counseling and in a lot of work.
Every year when we have teachers come in, I have my students stand before them, and they have a one-minute metaphor. Sue Ellen's metaphor was that she is a broken teacup. She says when you drop a very fragile teacup, you might break in pieces and shatter, and the handle may break off, but the Freedom Writers were her glaze. We put her back in the fire, and all of this love and passion and understanding, etc, allowed her to be put back together again. Even though she's not perfect, she feels perfectly imperfect. I think that's an amazing metaphor I'll steal from her and give credit to, because I think the Freedom Writers, by virtue of being in my program, were very broken, dealing with issues of abandonment, dealing with issues of abuse, dealing with issues of self-sabotaging and body-shaming.
It is not easy to feel beautiful. It's a dance. With Sue Ellen, there are still moments where we have to do interventions. We have and we do, we have another one coming up. But sometimes the most celebratory times in society are the most difficult times for kids who struggle. The holidays sucker punch my students, because their families aren't right, and they're certainly not normal. When you see all of these images about what the holidays should be, and it's not for you, it's really difficult.
It's not surprising to me that the first person who volunteered this year to go to juvenile hall was Sue Ellen. She went with me last year. For her to be in a room full of young women who are battered and bruised and broken like she was, to make them feel beautiful is such a gift to pay it forward. I hope that when she uses those words about beauty, that she's also projecting from within.
It is a constant struggle for us in the Freedom Writer world. It's not overnight and instantaneous, and suddenly you say the words, and poof, you're all better. It is something we have to be vigilant about. The irony is with Sue Ellen, there's been moments where I've had to do an intervention. That's a tough thing when you do an intervention, because you don't know how people are going to react. I have taken her to college hospital in the past and placed a 50-150 on her when she was having those suicidal thoughts or self-sabotaging. Often times with young women, they do a lot of self-wounding and cutting and all those horrible things that come with being broken. The scars can be external or the scars can be internal, and it's constant and something that I have to work with these young women specifically to find their inner beauty.
Melissa: So with all of that, my question is where do you find the inspiration to do what you do? I'm just thinking of, yeah, you are uplifting this huge community of students and then also post-students. I'm just so curious to know about if you could speak to your inspiration to do the work that you do.
Erin: I think inspiration is daily. We have these beautiful “aha” moments, but that can be really depleting trying to get there, trying to have that crescendo, that moment of bravado. It's exhausting. I think for me, what I've had to do is do that delicate dance of self-care where I journal or I go to a therapist once a week religiously. I have been able to really keep and cultivate and maintain the most incredible group of friends that have been a part of my life for the better part of forever.
My best friends ironically come from second grade, and all these years later, they're still my best friends. I love specifically my best friend Nicky has seen me through the most awkward stages of my life of bad bangs, bad perms, bad hair, bad fashion, braces, oversized glasses, you name it, and has been my best friend through the best times. What I love is that every once in a while, we can go back and find that unbelievably awkward elementary or middle school photo and laugh hysterically.
For me, that was really important to stay grounded, that I've got the most amazing friends from my past that are part of my present, and I have my brother and sister are like standup comedians to me. They're hysterical. I like to laugh. I don't think I'm funny, I just think I love to laugh and have a lot of joy. I'm really humbled being around them, because they're so quick with the zingers. They too have seen every awkward moment. I think we all have those awkward moments. I love that we have incriminating photos to prove it.
I think that was really important to me that as our story has evolved and changed, to still be anchored to our past and never lose sight of that. At the end of the day, yes, there is this crazy juggernaut movie out there, but I know I'm not Hilary Swank, and I often start out a speech in a very self-deprecating way where young kids will always remind me that I'm a lot older than that woman in the movie, just so people know that, hello, I'm a real person, ordinary, and I don't walk red carpets. I don't have makeup artists. In fact, I don't know how to put on makeup most of the time. For me, it's that cycle of being able to build other people up, and when I'm depleted, how do I refuel and recalibrate? That's really important.
Melissa: Yeah. Thank you. The next question is about lies about beauty. I'm curious what kinds of lies about beauty that you've experienced.
Erin: I think I'm a very ordinary person who had a very extraordinary experience. To have gone from a classroom where you're on your feet all day, and there was a teacher friend of mine who as we were writing one of our books called "Teaching Hope," my favorite line from her journal entry was her perfect day was to breathe, stay vertical. No, pee, breathe, and stay vertical. It was this analogy that as teachers, we can go an entire day and not do those things. We don't breathe, we don't pee, we don't stay vertical, we don't eat, and you’ve got chalk on your butt, it's dirty, and there's all of that stuff.
To have gone from that environment, which is where I feel the most comfortable, to having to do everything that comes with both a book tour and a movie tour; interviews, magazines, television shows, it's so bonkers, and to see the superficiality of that. What I was really proud of when the Freedom Writers and I walked the red carpet is we thought if we're going to walk the red carpet, some news outlet, Entertainment Tonight, People Magazine, somebody sticks a camera in our face, we're not going to take the time to talk about what we're wearing. We're going to talk about substantive issues.
I hate the fact that with ever award show or with magazines, it's, "What are you wearing, and how much does it cost?" I realize that for some of the dresses that these starlets wear, it is more than my students' parents made in an entire year or a month. We realize we're not going to go there. We're not going to play that game. Whenever we were on shows, we didn't want to have a makeup artist. We'll do our own hair. We'll dress ourselves.
I remember we were going to be on Oprah, and I feel like in retrospect, I look like a deer in the headlights, because they insisted on doing our hair and makeup. I was so uncomfortable, because it didn't look like me. I was like, "I just want to talk about things that are relevant." That was the one show that my friends were hysterical like, "Erin, you look petrified," because I was so uncomfortable.
I remember the makeup artist was criticizing why I didn't go to Anastasia in Beverly Hills and get my eyebrows done. I was like, "I don't live in Beverly Hills and I don't need to go get my brows done." I think it gave us a really almost voyeuristic viewpoint of what it takes to make something viewer ready. I said earlier that I wanted Hilary Swank to play me. The studios at that point did not. I went through a cycle of ... These are four actresses, just to name a few, that were slated to play me. First it was Gwyneth Paltrow, then it was Reese Witherspoon, then it was Cameron Diaz, and then it was Kate Hudson. All of them blonde, all of them emaciated, all of them probably sample sizes which are below a size two, all of them uncomfortably thin. I thought this is not the image that I want. I don't want a size zero blonde with chiseled features to play me in a movie in my environment that is chalk on your butt, uncomfortable, breathe, pee, and stay vertical.
I really put up a stink and said, "I don't feel comfortable with this being the story that I want to tell. I don't want you to die some blonde bombshell brunette so she's gritty and substantive." So you said earlier it's always Caucasian women. It's Caucasian women who are blonde and blue eyed. I'm thankful for the Jenners and the Kardashians who are dark haired, dark eyes, but still, when you think of that virtuoso, often times it is that very gaunt, very thin blonde, blue eyed, unattainable image.
Having to be around those folks, having gone to interviews, that was weird seeing women who were so teeny-tiny, and they have what they call craft services where anything, everything you want to eat, they put at interviews and red carpets, and realizing these women are not going to eat everything that's on craft services. For me, I'm like, "You just need to have some comfort food. Have some mac and cheese. Have some meatloaf. Have a piece of pizza."
For me, it was really reassuring that that's not a life that I want to lead. Those are not ... I'm not saying that those particular four women are shallow. I'm just saying the way that we build up that archetype is very shallow. I always will go back to someone who's comfortable in their skin, someone who has wonderful values and virtues and valor is more important to me than the sample size or who or what they're wearing.
Melissa: Thank you. Everything you're saying has so much truth in it, and it's so helpful to hear you say that. The next question is have you had any experiences that have transformed your ideas around beauty?
Erin: I think yes. Growing up, I had a lot of awkward stages, but I was also very much a tomboy. My dad was a professional baseball player and played and worked in professional sports my whole life. As a girl growing up, I was the tomboy. I played every sport, rough and tumble. I always had bruises, but my junior and senior year of high school, I was a cheerleader. I was this down and dirty sports girl during the day, and I was a cheerleader covered in bruises, because I played field hockey and soccer, and my legs were always getting kicked and battered with a hockey stick.
Being a cheerleader was an interesting switch for me, because it's anything but tomboyish. It was my first bout of learning about eating disorders. There was two cheerleaders on my squad who were not grounded. Two of these girls, one was bulimic, one was anorexic, and it was really difficult for myself and my set of girlfriends who'd all grown up being rough and tumble. I think when you're an athlete, you're always hungry, because your metabolism is just on fire. I could not fathom these girls who were both starving themselves and/or throwing up. That was something that was, for me in high school, my junior and senior year, really difficult. We would do interventions all the time and for the other girls, because we'd grown up in that kind of aggressive sports arena and had great metabolisms, we just could not understand why these girls were so physically taunted by their self image.
Another thing that I am...kind of embarrassed in retrospect, at the time, it was flattering, but I didn't pursue it. I was also chosen as the queen of my class. When you get into your ... You have to wear a sash. That's a weird thing when you're a tomgirl. I never thought of myself as the ... At that time, I thought ... Because I'm friends with all the boys, and I played pickup soccer with them, so I always thought of myself back then as I'm one of the guys. I got chosen not because of my looks, it's because I'm one of them.
When I started teaching, what I found horrifying is, because I was young, I would be criticized by what were the mean girls, these other teachers. That was horrifying. I would be accused of, "Oh, just because you're this or that," which I was like, "Huh?" Then I got accused of ... As the story started evolving, "Oh, you must be sleeping with the superintendent, or you're just flirting your way…" I was like, "Oh my God." I had never really dealt with mean girls when I was in high school or college. To be a young professional, to have these other women have so much vitriol and anger, and I would never use sexuality to get ahead. I would never use looks to woo someone.
That was a rude awakening, and I realized that women can be unbelievably catty. Women can body shame. Women can be very toxic. I had to learn to stay in my classroom. I thought I'm not even going to go in that teacher's lounge. This is so hard on my self-esteem. My day is hard enough. Why do I want to go and hear these horrible things being said by teachers who should know better, but who are also not creating hate-free zones in their classrooms. These are the same women who were not speaking up and standing up for horrible things that were being said about my African American, Latino, and Asian students.
I realized you got to stand up for everybody at all times. I feel that I have become the most amazing advocate for women at all times. I just want to build them up. I just want to validate them. I think I'm almost overly effusive and overly demonstrative, because I want to make up for lost time for everybody. I found that the people who are the most surprised in how overly effusive I am is some of my girlfriends who are striking and stunning. They're the first to self-deprecate. They're the [first] to minimize. I always want to tell them, "Don't take away my joy from my compliment. Let me say a compliment, bite your tongue until it bleeds, and just say thank you," because you are all those things.
I think that's part of why I'm such a ravenous feminist. I feel that the word feminist has been bastardized by the media, and political parties have made that a dirty word, but the person who taught me to be a feminist was my dad. My dad was such a women's rights advocate. My dad burned bras during the women's movement. I love that from my dad I got this kind of tomboy element of being rough and tumble, but also being a feminist and fighting for women's rights.
When you're a woman, I think that we can be assertive or aggressive. When we're aggressive, we get labeled as a bitch. When we're confident, we are a slut or a whore. I fight those words always. Whenever I have a microphone, which I do almost weekly, I really call that out to make sure that we don't use those words towards women in a locker room, in the halls ever, and that when we hear those words, we've got to say something.
Melissa: Thank you for using your platform for upholding other people. It's so rare. So amazing. Thank you for being that. My last question is what have you found are the keys to unlocking beauty in others or in their situations potentially? How do you call that ... Yeah, what have you found to be helpful in calling that forth or unlocking that within other people?
Erin: That’s a great question. I always use the cliche when my students said what we've heard as kids, "Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will never hurt you," I disagree. I've seen the effects of bullying and shaming. I had the students who were called dumb, stupid, or nothing so much so often by so many people that those words stuck and they stung and became very internalized and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Negative words often are the words that we fixate on.
In the realm of intelligence with a classroom, I was given students who my students realized that the system had called dumb, stupid, nothing, that there's also that in the social arena, there are those words that stick and sting and stay with us, whether they are, "You're ugly. You're fat. Your hair's not straight enough. Your hair's not curly enough. Your hair's not the perfect Jennifer Aniston quaff." She couldn't even do the Rachel apparently when she was on Friends. Shades are typical. "You're not light enough. You're not dark enough. You don't have the perfect chiseled nose." All of those things that we are told are really something that I fight.
I think that the Kardashians have been really detrimental to women's self-esteem, because if you know that you are altering your face and body with surgery, you know that you can afford to buy trainers and have food delivered and all of those things that alter the physicality of your being. When Kylie is doing these silly tests, if you can do the pucker by blowing up your lips while she's getting fillers, while she's having injections, all of those things, and essentially lying to the public. I think that's really detrimental when people can claim, "Oh, I just lost some weight, and I have more defined cheekbones," or, "Oh, I just did contouring, and my nose is slimmer," I think that is horrifying, because that's giving an image to people that you have to alter yourself to be beautiful.
What I do is I overkill, how beautiful they look and smell and act and use beauty to be synonymous with their being, the way they hold themselves. When they sit a little taller and they feel a little bit more confident, or they get the right answer. To me, brilliance is beautiful. I take all of those negative words that have been used for young women specifically, and just use them ad nauseum, ad infinitum, all of the time.
Same thing with men. I love to compliment my boys. I'm on this new kick. A lot of my girlfriends have babies. The words that we use for babies that are so fun, I now use them for my big boys. Carlos is gigantic, and he's got tats, and he was an ex-gangster, and I always tell him he's delicious and that he's yummy. And kids giggle and they squirm, but I do that because, kind of going to your question earlier, he was broken when I met him. He was abandoned at six months old. It makes me emotional, but I realize that as a little baby, he never got to hear those words that, "You're so delicious, I just want to eat you alive." Or, "You're so yummy, I just want to nibble on your toes," because he asked me point blank one day, "Do you think I was an ugly baby?" As if that was the reason he was abandoned.
I just want to make up for lost time. I just want this big, burly kid to feel delicious. I think there's a lot of power with words. If he's standing on a stage with me at a high school, and I throw out the words that he's delicious, I know there's going to be laughter. But then I can have the retort about what delicious means to me. It's not sexualized at all. It's about this kid means so much to me that he's like my son. He's like my boy. I just can't get enough. He just lights up, and he lights up a room. It's amazing.
It's about taking those words, I love telling boys some of the words that we use for women, that they're beautiful. Usually with a man, you think of handsome, but I love turning those words on its head and using them in non-gender ways. I'm an English teacher at my core, so words mean a lot. I like to take very negative and "I'm going to kill you with 10 compliments, 10 positive words." That's really important to me.
Melissa: Well, Erin, again, I can't thank you enough for doing this. I'm going to sit with your words. It'll be a privilege to transcribe it, because I'll get to kind of digest them again. You are just a bright light in a world that can be full a struggle. Thank you for being who you are and for doing this. I appreciate it so much.
Erin: Great. I hope to see you soon in February, if not sooner.
Melissa: Awesome. Thank you so much, Erin.
Erin: Thanks again.
Melissa: Okay. Yes.
Photo credit: Rebecca Wynia
Read more about Erin’s story in The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them on Amazon.
To learn more about Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers Foundation, check out the following link:
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