“The greatest lessons, are the ones you don’t remember learning.” This is the last line from the spoken word poem “Somewhere in America” by Belissa Escoloedo, Zariya Allen, and Rhiannon McGavin. My favorite thing about this poem is that it shines a light on reality. There are things wrong with America and this poem points them out, from the pieces of history that are ignored to the hypocritical actions of us all. What we really learn growing up is not to think, but to repeat what others want to hear.
I am guilty of holding my tongue when I know I should say something. My words, they are not always nice, but most of the time, they are honest. You see, I don’t like sugar coating my word, and that is exactly what these three young women refuse…show more content… In this world we are the mixing pot, people from all over the world live in our country. We expect the truth from others, so why do we teach lies or skim past them so fast that we don’t even get a glimpse of the truth. Our country is so rich because for over two hundred years, we didn’t pay for our labor.
My Grandmother picked cotton when she was a kid and my great grandma was a slave. Now my family is anything but little with eight kids from my grandma's side and seven from my grandpa’s. I have more cousins than I know what to do with, but they are family. My history is important, not just to me, but to my family and all the other people with African-American history. Those years of mistreatment don’t go away with a single night's sleep. We want people to remember the pain our ancestors went through. This poem shows that even if it is in the past, our ancestor’s pain will not be…show more content… In some states they ban books and poems from being read in school. I can understand that some works of art are not appropriate for all ages, but this is America the home of the free. Maya Angelou is one of the greatest poets ever, in my opinion, but we have to skip over her when we learn poetry. Why, you may ask, because the topics of her poems, no matter how true, are deemed inappropriate to talk about in school. We don't talk about the hard things. It’s always a commercial, at three in the morning, or a billboard, that no one reads, that show the missing child or the number of people sold into slavery every