Prejudice. Found Poem by Christopher Feustel

While making this found poem, I wanted to explore the chains that racism and segregation and prejudice create on people. So I decided to explore En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” because it had a main idea of being open to everyone and their ideas. Ironically, I used this song to show prejudice and what comes with racism. I decided to cut out most of the positive words in the beginning of the song, because I wanted the reader to go through a transformation while reading. The transformation I had in mind was to show the reader what would happen if we weren’t so caught up in our ways, and if we were colorblind. The beginning goes over the hatred of other races and the societal norms of that hatred. The middle is the turning point, where there is a resistance to change, but it’s also welcomed, and then finally towards the end, there is the full change to being colorblind and to beings accepting. And also in a way, it’s freeing your mind. 
While I was creating this found poem, I had to bring up uncomfortable thoughts of racism, which helped me to find what I wanted to talk about in the beginning of the poem, and as I entered my thought process in today’s times, I was able to easily conclude the poem with a freeing tone. While making myself think of racism, I made myself upset. I wondered why anyone would think it would be okay to discriminate against someone else just based on the color of their skin or their background. They have done nothing inherently wrong and it made me upset to think about the way these people are treated. This ultimately became a learning experience for me as well. I can now understand why Zong! Is written the way it is. It invokes a certain type of feeling to not only the reader, but to the writer as well. I can finally understand how she felt while making this and it hurts to see how much pain this topic had brought her. However, that is exactly what she wanted us to feel, and that is exactly what I went for in writing my found poem.



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