Citizen: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine's bold book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.
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Community Reviews
This was required reading for school. It was a quick, interesting book that makes you think. Have I been in one of these situations? Have I done anything like this and made someone else uncomfortable? How can I be a part of making these things better?
I recommend that everyone read this book. It's definitely worth the time.
I recommend that everyone read this book. It's definitely worth the time.
Provocative truly exemplifies this set of essays on race. They will provide me with food for thought for a long time.
I almost gave this book 4 stars (or 4.5 stars) because it is a difficult book to read. It's painful. I had to go slower than I wanted to go to really take it in. I felt dejected. I felt defeated. I felt outside the experience. I felt suffocated inside it. It's really hard to read. When I got to the end, I realized that all my agonizing meant Rankine had done an amazing job as an artist.
I know there was much of this that I did not understand.
I know that, as someone who is white, there is much of this that I cannot understand.
And you? If you were also born with that white privilege silver spoon in your mouth? You cannot understand either. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't seek to. That doesn't mean it's not extremely important for you to read this.
And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
I don't know that this was perfect, but it was perfectly emotional. At times it is a little hard to follow; Rankine is so deep in the injustice (and justified to be) and her gut, that it sometimes comes out like a 100mph breathless stream of emotion - a real punch.
That time and that time and that time the outside blistered the inside of you, words outmaneuvered years, had you in a chokehold, every part roughed up, the eyes dripping.
That's the bruise the ice in the heart was meant to ice.
To arrive like this every day for it to be like this to have so many memories and no other memory than these for as long as they can be remembered to remember this.
4 Stars
I know that, as someone who is white, there is much of this that I cannot understand.
And you? If you were also born with that white privilege silver spoon in your mouth? You cannot understand either. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't seek to. That doesn't mean it's not extremely important for you to read this.
And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
I don't know that this was perfect, but it was perfectly emotional. At times it is a little hard to follow; Rankine is so deep in the injustice (and justified to be) and her gut, that it sometimes comes out like a 100mph breathless stream of emotion - a real punch.
That time and that time and that time the outside blistered the inside of you, words outmaneuvered years, had you in a chokehold, every part roughed up, the eyes dripping.
That's the bruise the ice in the heart was meant to ice.
To arrive like this every day for it to be like this to have so many memories and no other memory than these for as long as they can be remembered to remember this.
4 Stars
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