Let it go. Rankine stays with the unnamed protagonist, who in response to racist comments constantly asks herself things like, “What did he just say?” and “Did I hear what I think I heard?” The problem, she realizes, is that racism is hard to cope with because before people of color can process instances of bigotry, they have to experience them. 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. At another event, the protagonist listens to the philosopher Judith Butler speak about why language is capable of hurting people. All the same, though, her guilt once more highlights the emotional strain that racism causes her. Listened as part of the Diverse Spines Reading Challenge. Claudia Rankine is an American poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. The second chapter discusses the YouTube character Hennessy Youngman (created by Jayson Musson) and racial incidents in the life of Serena Williams. Predictably, my finger hovers over sections that are more like prose than poetry ( that bit on Serena was a highlight). In saying, even implicitly, who we’re speaking to, we say who we’re willing to exclude. What passage reminded you of something you experienced? They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. In the very last story, the racist realization is shouted down on the narrator. See all the pieces in this month’s Slate Book Review. The poem that started it all, Hoagland’s “The Change,” isn’t actually all that interesting—at least not to me. The thing is, most people who commit these microaggressions don't realize they are making them yet they have an accumulated effect on the psyche. Welcome back. Needless to say, this exchange has irrevocably ruined any chances of developing a productive therapeutic relationship, since the protagonist won’t be able to simply ignore the fact that her therapist has such negative assumptions about black people. is the breathtaking and often hilarious debut from novelist Raven Leilani. Continuing to detail the experiences of this unnamed protagonist, Rankine narrates an instance later in the young woman’s life, when her friend frequently calls her by the name of her own housekeeper. According to Rankine, when she went to talk to Hoagland about the poem, he brushed her off by saying “this poem is for white people.” In his written response (which is occasionally interesting, persistently condescending, and occasionally absurd: Who thinks “the topic of race belongs only to brown-skinned Americans”? Our, “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. I nearly always would rather spend time with a novel. We’d love your help. After all, the protagonist’s colleague hasn’t even stopped to think about the fact that he has said something problematic, meaning that the protagonist would most likely have to explain this to him if she were to speak up. A piercing and perceptive book of poetry about being black in America. Read the Study Guide for Citizen: An American Lyric…, Considering Schiller and Arnold Through Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Poetry, Politcs, and Personal Reflection: Redefining the Lyric in Claudia Rankine's Citizen, Ethnicity's Impact on Literary Experimentation, Citizen: A Discourse on our Post-Racial Society, View our essays for Citizen: An American Lyric…, Introduction to Citizen: An American Lyric, View the lesson plan for Citizen: An American Lyric…, View Wikipedia Entries for Citizen: An American Lyric…. A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine’s long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Start by marking “Citizen: An American Lyric” as Want to Read: Error rating book. 'Come on. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric is a genre-bending meditation on race, racism, and citizenship in 21st-century America. (That part surprised me.) In this way, she is the one who would have to expend emotional energy in order to address. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. When you get back, apologies are exchanged and you tell your friend to use the backyard next time he needs to make a phone call. Microaggressions exist within and without black communities, among people of color and people of privilege. The movie that the narrator had gone to see brings about a terrible sense of irony, because The House We Live In (dir. "Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's 'I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background. Lips Are Flapping and Sound Isn't Coming Out. As she notes, “a friend once told you there exists the medical term—John Henryism—for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. This guide will refer to the person being described by the second-person address (the “you”) as … The seventh chapter is a complex meditation on race, the body, language and various incidents in the life of the author. The third chapter features more microaggressions and the nature of racist language. 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. This draws attention to the idea of visibility (or invisibility) and how other people’s implicit biases can impact a person’s sense of self—a theme that will resurface throughout, A photograph appears beneath the description of the. In these moments, then, it’s especially meaningful when people of color stand together, giving each other the support necessary to call attention to injustice. Hoagland works so hard to make the speaker’s racism cartoonishly unreal, to avoid the risk of inhabiting any racism that might come to life on the page, in his voice, that the poem’s final reckoning with racism can be as small and soft as “it was past us / and we were changed.”. I saw the world through her eyes, a profound experience. As Michelle Alexander writes in. The first section of Citizen combines dozens of racist interactions into one cohesive chapter. Dan Chiasson, in the New Yorker, wrote that "[Citizen] is an especially vital book for this moment in time. This is a poignant powerful work of art. Luster Citizen as one of the inspirations for her album, Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, Raven Leilani on Writing a ‘Messy Black Woman’. Even though it will be obvious that the girl behind her is cheating, the protagonist obliges by leaning over, wondering all the while why her teacher hasn’t noticed. Chapter five is a complex poem on self-identity interspersed with more microaggressions. Furthermore, it’s worth mentioning some of the many books Rankine draws upon within the pages of The narrator contemplates why this person feels comfortable saying this in front of her. In this conversation, the protagonist’s friend attempts to articulate the ways in which history has impacted both her and the protagonist’s cultural positionings. At first, the “you” here is that other author’s audience—or, more accurately, the part of that audience he perceives: More than 40 pages in, for just that one sentence, “you” means someone else. Literature Guides Poetry Guides Literary Terms Shakespeare Translations ... Our Teacher Edition on Citizen: An American Lyric can help. She tries to acknowledge the overall effect of history on the present, but in doing so, all she manages to make clear is that she’s hyper-aware of the protagonist’s race. About a third of the way into the book, Citizen loosens its grip somewhat, taking on more public—and more disastrously physical—events. Brilliant, deeply troubling, beautiful. Such talk imagines a culture based on the absence of some people, and in doing so, it addresses those people, too. We live in a culture as full of microaggressions as breaking new headlines, and Citizen brings it home. But it does, as Rankine begins referring to herself, occasionally, as “I,” make room for the intimacy of some other “you,” someone with whom she can share a language that embodies the persistent, heavy burden of being so prominently erased. Refresh and try again. The book would have felt imbalanced without them. A damn hard read but a damn necessary one. At a glance, the interactions seem to be simple misunderstandings - friends mistaken for strangers, frustrations incorrectly categorized as racial, or just honest mistakes. When I—someone more likely to stand in the place of an offending friend or colleague than that of Rankine—pull away from the “you” in one story, I’m forced to register my choice to stand apart and its refusal of Rankine’s experience. He says he will call wherever he wants. Words can enter the day like "a bad egg in your mouth and puke runs down your blouse" (15). Rankine continues to examine the protagonist’s gravitation toward numbness before abruptly switching to first-person narration on the book’s final page to recount an interaction she has while lying in bed with her partner. It's a moment like any other. "Citizen: An American Lyric Section I Summary and Analysis". Whether Rankine is talking about tennis or going out to dinner, or spinning words until you’re not sure which direction you’re facing, there is strength, anger, and a call for white readers like myself to see what’s in front of, After reading Citizen, it’s hard not to hear Rankine’s voice as I ride the subway, walk around NYC, or even pick up other books. In the fourth chapter Rankine writes of the transition of sighs into aches, the nature of language, memory, and watching tennis matches in silence. is so apt, especially for those of us living in multicultural environments. That small, momentary shift makes the stakes of her approach unmistakable. It’s the reason that “for white people” is so problematic, even outside its historical echoes. — Jenn Northington. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. This kind of ignorance makes it even harder than it already is for people to push back against racism, since individuals like this man are apparently completely unaware of the impact their own behavior has on others. The picture is of a well-manicured suburban neighborhood with sizable houses in the background. Rankine does a brilliant job taking an in-depth look at life being black. When she tells him not to “get all KKK” on the teenagers, he says, “Now there you go,” trying to make it seem like the protagonist is the one who has overstepped, not him. The conversation the protagonist has with her friend about embodying a “yes, and” attitude toward life is worth noting because it underscores the fact that the only way to respond to anything in life is by moving forward. It is one of the best books I’ve ever wanted not to read. Citizen: An American Lyric is the book she was reading. Amid so much supposedly race-neutral language, it lands with a violent unreality, uprooting both subject and speaker. By my middling review, I definitely don’t mean to take away anything from. Rivetingly worth it for the Serena Williams section and the slices of life in the first half that so effectively/efficiently dramatize overt and less obvious instances of racism. Instant downloads of all 1360 LitChart PDFs The door is locked so you go to the front door where you are met with a fierce shout. "Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's 'I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.' On the drive back from the movie, the protagonist receives a call from her neighbor, who tells her that there’s a sinister looking man walking back and forth in front of her house.