Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine was born in 1963 in Kingston, Jamaica, and studied at Williams College, then took an MFA at Columbia. Since then, she has had great success publishing collections of poetry, anthologies, and has received many awards and fellowships. She is currently the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College as well as a chancellor in the Academy of American Poets. To say that Ranking has reached a bounty of success in her life is an understatement. In Citizen: An American Lyirc she presents her life as lived in the mostly Caucasian world of the academy, of privilege: she speaks of tennis lessons, housekeepers, conferences. Many pieces are about how her color precludes acceptance in this white space she inhabits. She foregrounds
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Citizen suggests that racial harmony is superficial—skin-deep—and Americans revert readily and easily to their respective racial camps. A friend’s son is knocked over in the subway—again, the ethnicity of those involved is not made explicit—“but the son of a bitch kept walking.” Mentally stimulating, thought-provoking, and a plethora of emotions are all that come to mind when thinking of Rankine’s CITIZEN: An American Lyric. However, one word that summarizes the work greatly would be, important. Although citizen was written long before any of the recent current events, it is utmost relevant for those who have been keeping a blind eye to the history of violence and hate towards African-Americans. As Rankine claims: what passes as news for some (white) readers is simply quotidian lived experience for (black) others. Rankine manages to encapsulate with power racial aggression and presenting them in a way that the viewer manages to make an emotional and heartfelt connection as well as making the viewer question themselves whether or not they have made unconscious insults as the ones being performed. There is a lengthy essay on Serena Williams that beautifully unpacks the “angry black woman” motif in a way that could also be seen as timely. And there is a series of “scripts,” some created in
Citizen suggests that racial harmony is superficial—skin-deep—and Americans revert readily and easily to their respective racial camps. A friend’s son is knocked over in the subway—again, the ethnicity of those involved is not made explicit—“but the son of a bitch kept walking.” Mentally stimulating, thought-provoking, and a plethora of emotions are all that come to mind when thinking of Rankine’s CITIZEN: An American Lyric. However, one word that summarizes the work greatly would be, important. Although citizen was written long before any of the recent current events, it is utmost relevant for those who have been keeping a blind eye to the history of violence and hate towards African-Americans. As Rankine claims: what passes as news for some (white) readers is simply quotidian lived experience for (black) others. Rankine manages to encapsulate with power racial aggression and presenting them in a way that the viewer manages to make an emotional and heartfelt connection as well as making the viewer question themselves whether or not they have made unconscious insults as the ones being performed. There is a lengthy essay on Serena Williams that beautifully unpacks the “angry black woman” motif in a way that could also be seen as timely. And there is a series of “scripts,” some created in