Rankine aims to show how, taken collectively, these stresses upon African Americans can inhibit an ability to live full, meaningful lives. Some of the racist incidents it chronicles are seemingly minor offenses or clumsy missteps, while others are more intentional. Pointing to events such as the murder of Trayvon Martin, the case surrounding Jena Six, and the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, among others, one of the central ideas of Citizen, however, is that racism persists.īy exposing the pervasiveness of systemic racism-in the schoolyard, at the grocery store, at home, on the soccer field, on the tennis court, on TV, and online- Citizen encourages the reader to think critically about race in America today. Her strict control registers the strain of writing only in ways that will protect her from racist judgments, of her constant awareness that “witnessing the expression of this more ordinary and daily anger might make the witness believe that a person is ‘insane.Upon President Barack Obama’s electoral victories in 20, some argued that America had entered into a “post-racial.” To them, the election of a black president signified the true realization of equal rights for African Americans, a kind of crowning achievement that had been set in motion in the 19th century with the Emancipation Proclamation and continued throughout the civil rights movement of 20th century. One of the marvels of Rankine’s writing is that it so consistently embodies the ways in which the harm done by language turns to flesh, enduring at an almost cellular level, even while she forgoes the sonic fretwork that typically makes poetic language real.

They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure.”Ĭitizen does much of its work in the body of the readers who stand in for her. As she notes, “a friend once told you there exists the medical term-John Henryism-for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. To be black, Citizen insists, is to be audibly, palpably, invisible, and the book is in large part a struggle to make that feeling tangible. That small, momentary shift makes the stakes of her approach unmistakable. It imagines-assumes-an all-white audience and, in the process, erases Rankine, who will resume the role or “you” one sentence later. More than 40 pages in, for just that one sentence, “you” means someone else.

Claudia rankine an american lyric