I was born and raised in California, where I was treated like dirt, we moved to this place to escape it all.
Little did we know, this place would become our nightmare.
This place is called, Small Town America, which from the
outside looks like freedom.
But little did we know, Small Town America did not treat well.
When we arrived, all seemed well, the grass was green, the sky was bright.
Small Town America, became our home and our delight.
It was perfect, for a while, until people realized what had arrived.
The people quickly found out who we were, we then became known as pests, like mice.
While, Small Town America was free from poverty, it was not free from choice.
You see in Small Town America, you can do anything, except be a different religion.
Small Town America has strict rules,
these rules must be followed, or persecution will occur.
My family was found to be Mormon, a religion that means no harm, and Small Town America did not react well.
The town began to cry, and as fast as we found freedom, it was taken away by the people of Small Town America.
Small Town America, a place we thought had freedom of choice, made us realize we had no choice at all.
Small Town America, began to yell, the town began to hunt us, as cats do with mice.
Small Town America, had become the place where we became persecuted.
Small Town America, threatened and harassed, until no longer could we bear it, and moved away at last.
Small Town America, a place that seems like freedom, turned into our living nightmare.
Isaac Earnheart, Dark skies in the Midwest, Missouri, April 2019, All rights reserved.
Inspiration: I had an interview with someone who was different from me religiously. The person I interviewed was born and raised in California and suffered many hardships as a youth because of the lack of income and religion. The person’s family moved to a small rural town, outside of Kansas City. When they arrived nobody had yet realized they were Mormon, but as soon as they were found out, things got difficult. The town turned on them quickly and began persecuting them and would threaten them verbally. I used the line, “The people quickly found out who we were, we then became known as pests, like mice.” I was relating it to the graphic novel Maus. In Maus, the Jewish people were often depicted as mice and were persecuted by cats, who were the Nazis. I used this to push my point that in Small Town America, people who do not allow religious freedom are just like the Nazi’s, they are attempting to destroy and restrict others freedom. The person talked about how over time people have learned to accept them, but there is still many people who persecute them daily.
Isaac Earnheart’s poem Small Town America tells the story of a families religious persecution when they moved to a small town in America. He goes into great detail about what that family felt like during these scary times, and how they felt so belittled that they could be compared with mice. This poem does a great job of letting the reader almost experience what it would be like to go through this situation, where you’re supposed to have freedom but for some reason you don’t. When the family in the poem moved they were expecting a fresh start and to leave the past behind of them being treated wrong but somehow it followed them. Isaac does a great job of exposing the irony of how this was supposed to be a fresh new start but for the family it is the same thing just in a new location. Even though the family was in a new town with new people they still were treated horribly. This shows how much of a problem religious persecution is because it happened wherever they went, this shouldn’t be as common as it is. That is another thing that the author did to make this poem powerful, by showing that it happens everywhere and can to everyone. No matter where persecuted people go it follows them as long as there are negative ideas out there about them they’ll find a way to them. Personally, I believe that this poem is trying to show one of the main issues with society today. Society has fallen into this belief that persecuting one because of their religious beliefs is okay because the majority doesn’t agree with it.