What Made Me, Me
We live in a world where everything changes us, the words spoken to us affect the way we speak to ourselves, and the way people treat us is the way we learn to treat ourselves. Literature Music and Art will always be special because they all seem to be made for our own interpretation. We all make connections to what we hear and see, whether something just reminds you of something your mom said growing up, or it’s Dejavu.
Growing up I struggled in a way that many people I’ve met cannot relate to. I was raised in a household with two cultures that constantly clashed, my mother desperately wanted my siblings and me to hold onto our Egyptians roots, but my father wanted us to be more American and fit in. I always felt held captive beneath my mother's thumb and the oppression the speaker in Go Down, Moses is something I related to that. “Let my people go, Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go.” This line specifically is something I relate to more than anything. My mother is very controlling and can be even cruel at times. I relate to “Let my people go” because of how trapped my siblings and I felt. I have so many siblings and growing up all I could’ve ever wanted was to protect them, they are my people and I wished my mother could have let them go. “Oppressed so hard they could not stand” means to me that we could not fight her. No matter what my mother would win, so what was the point in trying? My mother was pushing us down when all we wanted was to rise.
“I Will Fight No More” is a title that I found deeply relatable. My family suffers from a lot of mental illness, and for the longest time as a family we walked each other through it. There were many times I sat with someon...