To illustrate how story can bestow the healing gift of personal point of view, let us mention the Freedom Writers.642 In the 1990s, Long Beach, California was dubbed the “Gangsta-Rap capital” of the USA. Walking to school, teenagers risked the cross fire of gun battles between rival gangs. Every teenager knew someone who had perished in gang violence. As a new teacher, Erin Gruwell found her class overwhelmed by apathy. She wrote, “To some of these kids, death seems more real than a diploma.”643 Nevertheless, Gruwell found a way to motivate her students. She assigned two classic diaries,
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