Wednesday, January 24th and Thursday, January 25th
Two very powerful and thoughtful speakers who positively inspire youth, author, Zlata Filpovic and teacher, Erin Gruwell will address students at the Alameda County Juvenile Hall. Their appearance is coordinated through the Alameda County Library Write to Read Program, a national model that has introduced the joy of reading to more than 4,000 incarcerated youth annually.
Zlata Filipovic, author of A Child’s Life in Sarajevo, was not quite eleven when she started to keep a diary in 1991. Residing in Sarajevo, Bosnia, she lived through and recorded the horrors of war that encroached upon what was then Yugoslavia. Her book, originally published in Croat, is now translated into over twenty languages and published across the world. Zlata writes in her forward to the Freedom Writers Diary:
"Writing about the things that happen to us allows us to look objectively at what’s going on around us and turn a negative experience into something positive and useful. This process requires a lot of work, effort and greatness, but it is possible (...) it is a difficult, but powerful, path."
The difficult path of writing was undertaken my teacher Erin Gruwell, and her students. Inspired by Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic (who lived through war-torn Sarajevo), Gruwell brought spirit of hope
to her classes to Long Beach, California where she and her students captured their collective journey in The Freedom Writers Diary – How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. Through poignant student entries and Erin’s narrative text, the book chronicles their "eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding."
Gruwell has won national attention for her teaching. She and her students, the Freedom Writers, have appeared on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," "Primetime Live" and Barbara Walters' "The View." Her class, chronicled in the Los Angeles Times, the Long Beach Press Telegram, by the Associated Press and on National Public Radio, is now the subject for the newly released film, "Freedom Writers."
Zlata Filopivic and Erin Gruwell are two of the many authors who come through the Write to Read Program. Since 1999, the Alameda County Library Write to Read program has brought over 70 local and national speakers to the Juvenile Hall. The program recently received recognition by First Lady Laura Bush as one of seventeen recipients of the 2006 Coming Up Taller Awards. Founded in 1999, Write to Read motivates and inspires young people housed in the Alameda County Juvenile Hall to strengthen their reading skills and make meaningful connections to authors and books that can positively influence the choices they make in their own lives.
Coming Up Taller is an initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The President’s Committee partners with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to administer the program, which was founded in 1998.
For more information about Alameda County Write to Read-Juvenile Hall, please visit our website at http://juviewrite2read.aclibrary.org.