The Freedom Writers Diary

When this student meets Tony, a young boy at the Croatian hall who was shot at point-blank range by Serbian soldiers, s/he feels grateful to have left her/his native Peru. Like Tony who was permanently affected by war, this student’s life was overturned by terrorism in Peru. Her/his family had already planned on moving to the United States when, three weeks before they left, terrorists blew up the house next door. The student’s family was told that, if all the dynamite had exploded, their house too would have been blown to pieces.

In the United States, this student felt lost at school until s/he met some Mexican children who talked to her/him in Spanish. Like this student, Tony cannot communicate in English, but he was certainly capable of communicating his pain. After Zlata’s speech, in which she said that in war soldiers became children and children soldiers, this student realizes that soldiers do, in fact, behave irresponsibly and immorally, while children are forced to lose their innocence in war.