Throughout the book, Rankine refers to the protagonist in the second-person tense (you) so that readers effectively experience the book as this person (a black woman), Claudia Rankines Citizen explores the very complicated manner in which race and racism affect identity construction. Magnificent. Its rare to come across art, least of all poetry, that so obviously will endure the passing of time and be considered over and over, by many. Claudia Rankine is an absolute master of the written word. It is no longer a black subject, or black object (93)it has been rendered road-kill. The picture is of a well-manicured suburban neighborhood with sizable houses in the background. Claudia Rankine zeros in on the microaggressions experienced by non-white people, particularly black females, in the United States. PDF downloads of all 1699 LitCharts literature guides, and of every new one we publish. The visual motifs of frames and cells illustrate the way racist ideology, which endorsed slavery, continues to keep Black people in chains in modern-day America. When she objects to his use of this word, he acts like its not a big deal. Lyric Reading Revisited: Passion, Address, and Form in Citizen. American Literary History, vol. Trump is of course unapologetically and infamously racist against various races (and religions, women, and so on), so the woman behind Trump uses the opportunity to read this anti-racist book, knowing it will get national coverage; we see the title, we check it out: Powerful political commentary. Another stop that. Towards a Poetics of Racial Trauma: Lyric Hybridity in Claudia Rankines Citizen. Journal of American Studies, vol. 31 no. 3, 2019, pp. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform and stay alive. This narrator, who seems to be a version of Rankine herself at this moment, remembers a different time with a different racial make-up than the one in which she currently resides. What did she just do? Schlosser, using Citizen, redefines citizenship through the metaphor of injury (6). This confounds and seemingly irks him, prompting the protagonist to wonder why he would think itd be difficult to properly feel the injustice wheeled at a person of another race. A picture appears on the next page interrupting Rankine's poem, something that the reader will get used to as the text progresses. Yes, and leads to a narrow pathway with no forks in the road. Hoping he was well-intentioned, the woman answered . At one point, she attends a reading by a humorist who implies that its common for white people to laugh at racist jokes in private, adding that most people wouldnt laugh at this kind of joke if they were out in public where black people might overhear them. We live in a culture as full of microaggressions as breaking new headlines, and Citizen brings it home. Leaning against the wall, they discuss the riots that have broken out in London as a response to the unjustified police killing of a young black man named Mark Duggan. Complete your free account to request a guide. This emphasis on injury, of being a wounded animal (59, 65), all work in conjunction with the first image of the deer. Black Blue Boy, 1997.Courtesy of Carrie Mae Weems. Another sigh. The purposeful omission of the black bodies highlights yet again the erasure of Black people, while also showing us that this erasure goes beyond daily acts of microaggressions or the systemic forgetting of Black communities (Rankine 6, 32, 82). The brevity of description illuminates how quickly these moments of erasure occur and its dispersion throughout the work emphasizes its banality. By including Hammons In the Hood and the altered Public Lynching photograph, Rankine helps to bring the [black] dead forward (Adams 66) by asking us: Where is the rest of the lynched bodies in Lucas photograph, or the face in Hammons hoodie? Her repetition of this question beckons us to ask ourselves these questions, and the way the question transitions from a focus on the lingering impact of the event (haveyou seen their faces) to a question of historicity (didyou see their faces) emphasizes the ways these black bodies disappear from life (presence) to death (absence). You take to wearing sunglasses inside. It was a thing hunted and the hunting continues on a certain level (Skillman 429). While Rankine did not create these photos, the inclusion of them in her work highlights the way that her creation of her own poetic structure works with the content. Some of them, though, arent actually all that micro. Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. She envisioned her craft as a means to create something vivid, intimate, and transparent. This is a poignant powerful work of art. Teacher Editions with classroom activities for all 1699 titles we cover. I think this is probably excellent and I enjoyed most of it but my caveat needs to be I am inept at appreciating poetry. This all culminates in Carrie Mae Weems Black Blue Boy(Rankine 102-103), which repeats the visual motif of bars or cells, by having the same Black boy in three separate boxes (Figure 3). She never acknowledged her mistake, but eventually corrected it. A man in line refers to boisterous teenagers in the Starbucks as niggers. Skillman, Nikki. 1 Citizen has continued to amass resonance in the years since this essay was first written in 2017, a ; 1 Since its first publication by Graywolf Press in 2014, Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric has cleared a remarkable path in terms of acquiring garlands and gongs, making its way onto American poetry booklists and curricula at a dizzying pace. Claudia Rankine's book Citizen: An American Lyric was a New York Times bestseller and won many awards. The Question and Answer section for Citizen: An American Lyric is a great The celebrated poet and playwright is preparing to deliver a three-part lecture series at the University of Chicago during a pivotal moment: Russia has invaded Ukraine; the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the world; and the United States, she said, still teeters between fascism and fragile notions of democracy. The bare facts of Rankine's readership demographics are of no small importance: of the top ten hits on google search for 'claudia rankine citizen review', for instance, eight reviewers are white; three of the top four are white men working for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and Slate. A mixed-media collection of vignettes, poems, photographs, and reproductions of various forms of visual art, Citizen floats in and out of a multiple topics and perspectives. At this point, Citizen becomes more abstract and poetic, as Rankine writes scripts for situation video[s] she has made in collaboration with her partner, John Lucas, who is a visual artist. Even the paper that the text is printed on speaks to the political nature of Rankines form, for the acid free, 80# matte coated paper (Rankine 174), which looks and feels expensive, holds within it so much Black pain and trauma. She also writes about racist profiling in a script entitled Stop-and-Frisk, providing a first-person account by an unidentified narrator who is pulled over for no reason and mistreated by the police, all because he is a black man who fit[s] the description of a criminal for whom the police are supposedly looking. She tells him she was killing time in the parking lot by the local tennis courts that day when a woman parked in the spot facing her car but, upon seeing the protagonist sitting across from her, put her car in reverse and parked elsewhere. Although this is meant to help avoid misunderstandings, oftentimes too much is understood. Rankines use of the lyric deeply complicates the trope of lyric presence (Skillman 436) because it goes against the literary trope [that is often] devoid of any social markings such as race (Chan 152). Black people are dying and all of it is happening in the white spaces of America. Claudia Rankin's novel Citizen explores what it means to be at home in one's country, to feel accepted as an equal in status when surrounded by others. The disembodied heads of the Black subject does not only allude to lynching and captivity, as the 16 sections of the cupboard look like 16 prison cells, but it also represents the way bodies are stacked on top of one another in slave ships (Skillman 447). Jenn Northington. As a woman of color, I am always concerned about bringing a raced text into a classroom, especially at universities that are less diverse. Rankines visual metaphor and allusions to modern-day enslavement is repeated in John Lucas Male II & I(Rankine 96-97), which also frames Black and white subjects and objects in wooden frames (Figure 5). (including. Analysis Of Citizen By Claudia Rankine. This decision to use second-person also draws attention to the second-class status of black citizens in the US (Adams 58), or blackness as the second person (Sharma). He is, the neighbor says, talking to himself. Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric is a multidimensional work that examines racism in terms of daily microaggressions (comments or actions that subtly express prejudice) and their larger implications. Second-person pronouns, punctuation, repetition, verbal links, motifs and metaphors are also used by Rankine to create meaning. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class., Requesting a new guide requires a free LitCharts account. Suddenly you smell good again, like in Catholic school. I hope this book will help people become more empathic to the plight of others. Chingonyi, Kayo. A nuanced reflection on race, trauma, and belonging that brings together text and image in unsettling, powerful ways. The sections study different incidents in American culture and also includes a bit about France (black, blanc beurre). Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including "Citizen: An American Lyric" and "Don't Let Me Be Lonely"; two plays including "The White Card," which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson and American Repertory Theater) and will be published with Graywolf Press in 2019, and "Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue"; as In the light of the horrors that are finally coming out in the US concerning the police and its poor treatment of Black Americans, this book shines more not that, through words and pictures. By choosing to give space to the white space on the page, Rankine forces us to pause and sit with these moments of everyday racism. It begins by introducing an unnamed black protagonist, whom Rankine refers to as you. A child, this character is sitting in class one day when the white girl sitting behind her quietly asks her to lean over so she can copy her test answers. This direct reference to systemic oppression illustrates how [Black] men [and women] are a prioriimprisoned in and by a history of racism that structures American life (Adams 69). Claudia Rankine gives us an act of creativity and illumination that combats the mirror world of unseeing and unseen-ness that is imprinted onto the American psyche.I can't fix it or even root it out of myself but Rankine gives me, a white reader, (are there other readers - the mirror keeps reflecting), a moment when I can walk through the glass. Many of the interactions also involve an implicit invitation to take part in these microaggressive acts. Rankine describes these everyday events of erasure in small blocks of black text, each on its own white page. A damn hard read but a damn necessary one. Short on words, but every one counts and rings with purpose. The text becomes a metaphor for the way racism in America (content) is embedded in the existing social structures of systemic racism (form). It's a moment like any other. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. The artwork which is featured on the coverDavid Hammons In the Hood depicts a black hood floating in a white space. Medically, "John Henryism . The inescapability of their social condition and positioning, of their erasure and vulnerability, is also emphasized in Rankines highly stylised poem about the Jena Six (98-103). The question, "How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another?" In a way, Citizen becomes a modern manifestation of Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote about the United States from a French perspective in 1835 in Democracy in America. This sighing is characterized as self-preservation, (Rankine 60) and is repeated multiple times (62, 75, 151), just as breath or breathing is also repeated (55, 107, 156). Struggling with distance learning? I feel like Citizen is one of those books everyones read in some portion. For Rankine, there is no escaping the path from school to prison. Citizen as one of the inspirations for her album. Her work has appeared recently in the Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post. Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric. Complete your free account to access notes and highlights. Listened as part of the Diverse Spines Reading Challenge. And this ugliness is some of what being an American citizen means. Claudia Rankine on Blackness as the Second Person. Guernica, 5 Jan. 2017, www.guernicamag.com/blackness-as-the-second-person/. Her formally and poetically innovative text utilizes form, figuration, and literariness to emphasize key themes of the erasure, systemic hunting, and imprisonment of African-Americans in the white hegemonic society of America. Rankine shared the stories of some of the people whose experiences of racism are featured in "Citizen," including one of a black woman who was cut off by a white man in a pharmacy. Yes, and it utilizes many of the techniques of poetryrepetition, metaphor . I can only point feebly at bits I liked without having the language to say why. The natural response to injustice is anger, but Rankine illustrates that this response isnt always viable for people of color, since letting frustration show often invites even more mistreatment. Copyright 1999 - 2023 GradeSaver LLC. A cough launches another memory into your consciousness. The iconic image of American fear. The route is often . This makes Rankines use of the lyric form political in its subversive nature. It's raining outside and the leaves on the trees are more vibrant because of it. Instead, our eyes are forced to complete the sentence, just like how young Black boys are given a sentence, a life sentence, with no pause or stop or detour. Urban danger. The erasure of Black people is a theme that is referenced throughout Citizen.Rankine describes this erasure of self as systemic, as ordinary (32). Your neighbor has already called the police. The narrator contemplates why this person feels comfortable saying this in front of her. RANKINE, 2016. Its various realities-'mistaken' identity, social racism, the whole fabric of urban and suburban life-are almost too much to bear, but you bear them, because it's the truth. Rankine illuminates this paradox in order to question the concept of citizenship. By Parul Sehgal, Bookforum, Dec/Jan 2015. The narrator hopes to be "bucking the trend" of the physical tolls racism imposes by "sitting in silence" and refusing to engage with racists (p.13). Ratik, Asokan. Amid historic times, Claudia Rankine feels a deep sense of obligation. Best to drive through the moment instead of dwelling on it. Claudia Rankine's Citizen opens with a sequence of anecdotes, a catalog of racist micro-aggressions and "moments [that] send adrenaline to the heart, dry out the tongue, and clog the lungs." Refine any search. (That part surprised me.) These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. Her son went to another prestigious university instead. In Claudia Rankine's prosaic novel, Citizen (2014), she describes the importance of visibility and identity politics involving black minorities in America such as how black Americans are seen and heard or not, how people of color are treated through micro-aggressions as a marginalized community, and how an African American's identity . You say there's no need to "get all KKK on them, to which he responds "now there you go" (21). This has many meanings. In this memory, a secondary memory is evoked, but this time it is the author's memory. Considering Schiller and Arnold Through Claudia Rankine's Citizen Reading Between Lines of Citizen By using such an expensive paper, Rankine seems to be commenting on the veneer of American democracy, which paints itself white and innocent in comparison to other nations. Sister Evelyn does not know about this cheating arrangement. Rankine narrates another handful of uncomfortable instances in which the unnamed protagonist is forced to quietly endure racism. Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric and four previous books, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. What did he say? At a glance, the interactions seem to be simple misunderstandings - friends mistaken for strangers, frustrations incorrectly categorized as racial, or just honest mistakes. A piercing and perceptive book of poetry about being black in America. Teacher Editions with classroom activities for all 1699 titles we cover. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!, This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. Biss, Eula. The erratum to the chapter is available at 10.1007/978-3-319-49085-4_14. Although the man doesnt turn to look at her, she feels connected to him, understanding that its sometimes necessary to numb oneself to the many microaggressions and injustices hurled at black people. Rankine seems to ask this question again in a later poem, when she says: Have you seen their faces? Referring to Serena Williams, Rankine states, Yes, and the body has memory. Rather than her book being one whole lyric, it can be By definingCitizenas lyric, Rankine is placing herself in the historically white canon of lyric, while also subverting it by using second-person pronouns. Black people are being physically erased, through lynching and racist ideology (Rankine 135). "Citizen" begins by recounting, in the second person, a string of racist incidents experienced by Rankine and friends of hers, the kind of insidious did-that-really-just-happen affronts that. Figure 2. Not only is this poetic novel a vision of her world through her eyes, Rankine uses the experiences . Hearing this, the protagonist wonders why her friend feels comfortable saying this to her, but she doesnt object. . 1 It is quite unusual in this age . In their fight against the weight of nonexistence (Rankine 139), Black people do not have the authority of an I. The mess is collecting within Rankine's unnamed citizen even as her body rejects it. This trajectory from boyhood to incarceration is told with no commas: Boys will be boys being boys feeling their capacity heaving, butting heads righting their wrongs in the violence of, aggravated adolescence charging forward in their way (Rankine 101). This parallel between erasure and lynching can be seen more clearly when we look at Hulton Archives Public Lynchingphotograph, whose image had been altered by John Lucas (Rankine, 91) (Figure 1). The artist speaking to the protagonist is white, and he asks her if shes going to write about Duggan. This erasure (Rankine 11, 24, 32, 49, 142) or invisibility (43, 70-72, 82-84) of Black people is also illuminated in the use of second-person pronouns, which displaces the Ithe individualand replaces it with a youa subject. Citizen is comprised of multiple different artforms, including essayistic vignettes, poems, photographs, and other renderings of visual art. In the image (Figure 2), the deers body looks distortedits legs are oddly bent, its fourth leg is obscured, and one of its legs is cut off by the margin of the page. A mixed-media collection of vignettes, poems, photographs, and reproductions of various forms of visual art, Citizen floats in and out of a multiple topics and perspectives. To see the fascinating ways she conceives and evolves her projects is one of the great experiences of my life as an editor. (143). 9 likes. These are called microaggressions. "IN CITIZEN, I TRIED TO PICK SITUATIONS AND MOMENTS THAT MANY PEOPLE SHARE, AS OPPOSED TO SOME IDIOSYNCRATIC OCCURRENCE THAT MIGHT ONLY HAPPEN TO ME." Claudia Rankine was born in 1963, in Jamaica, and immigrated to the United States as a child. Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. Each word is a lyrical tribute to Black Americans and all that isn't shouted out on a daily basis. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. Courtesy Getty images (image alteration with permission: John Lucas). No longer can 'you' abide by these misunderstandings, because you understand them too well. An unsettled feeling keeps the body front and center. The work incorporates lyric essay, prose poem, verse poem, and image in its exploration of the ways in which racism can affect identity. Rankine is suggesting that this doesn't make friendship between the races impossible. 8389., doi:10.17077/0021-065x.6414. They are black property (Rankine 34), black subjects (70), or black objects (93) who do not own anything, not even themselves (146). In keeping with this indication that its difficult to move on from this entrenched kind of racism, Rankine includes a picture called Jim Crow Rd. by the photographer Michael David Murphy. This metaphor becomes even more complex when analyzing the way Rankine describes the stopping-and-frisking of Black people by the police. Instant PDF downloads. Predictably, my finger hovers over sections that are more like prose than poetry ( that bit on Serena was a highlight). Words can enter the day like "a bad egg in your mouth and puke runs down your blouse" (15). In Citizen, Claudia Rankine's lyrical and multimedia examination of contemporary race relations, readers encounter a kind of racism that is deeply ingrained in everyday life. In Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine deconstructs racism and reconstructs it as metaphor (Rankine, 5). Nick Laird is a poet and novelist who teaches at NYU and Queen's University, Belfast, where he is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry. Skillman observes that, Rankines pun on rumination in its zoological and cognitive senses (of cud-chewing and revolv[ing], turn[ing] over repeatedly in the mind [ruminate]) marks a strange convergence between states of dehumanization and curiosity (429). This ahistorical perspective ignores that the present is directly linked to past injustices, as they inform the way people of color are, Instant downloads of all 1699 LitChart PDFs By doing so, he accounts for the ways microaggression pushes minorities down, and often precludes the opportunity for a response. "Jim Crow Rd." is the first photograph to appear in the book, and it serves an important role: to show readers just how thoroughly the United States' painfully racist history has worked its way into . The way the content is organized, LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in. Some portion permission: John Lucas ) activities for all 1699 titles we cover Lyric political... This time it is the author 's memory is absolutely the best resource. The work emphasizes its banality the path from school to prison is to., photographs, and he asks her if shes going to write about Duggan when she says have... 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