"Those years of and before me and my brothers, the years of passage, plantation, migration, of Jim Crow segregation, of poverty, inner cities, profiling, of one in three, two jobs, boy, hey boy, each a felony, accumulate into the hours inside our lives where we are all caught hanging, the rope inside us, the tree inside us, its roots our limbs, a throat sliced through and when we open our mouth to speak, blossoms, o blossoms, no place coming out, brother, dear brother, that kind of blue. By definingCitizenas lyric, Rankine is placing herself in the historically white canon of lyric, while also subverting it by using second-person pronouns. 38, no. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. In addition to questioning unmarked whiteness, Claudia Rankine's Citizen contains all the hallmarks of experimental writing: borrowed text, multiple or fractured voices, constraint-based systems of creation, ekphrastic cataloging, and acute engagement with visual art. The sections study different incidents in American culture and also includes a bit about France (black, blanc beurre). Bella Adams(2017)Black Lives/White Backgrounds: Claudia Rankines Citizen: An American Lyricand Critical Race Theory,Comparative American Studies An International Journal,15:1-2,54-71,DOI:10.1080/14775700.2017.1406734. The decision to place Clarks image right after Rankines recount of a microaggression, where Rankine is yelled off the deer grass (Skillman 429) of a white therapist like some unwanted wild animal, shows us how white America views Black people: as pests and prey. It was timely fifty years ago. Detailed quotes explanations with page numbers for every important quote on the site. Claudia Rankine is an absolute master of the written word. Struggling with distance learning? Courtesy of Radcliffe Bailey and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Scholar Mary-Jean Chan argues that the power of the authoritative I lies in the hands of the historically white lyric I which has diminished the Black you: to refer to another person simply as you is a demeaning form of address: a way of emotionally displacing someone from the security of their own body (Chan 140). Rankine, Claudia. Sometimes you sigh. 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. Teachers and parents! 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. 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). We live in a culture as full of microaggressions as breaking new headlines, and Citizen brings it home. Hearing this, the protagonist wonders why her friend feels comfortable saying this to her, but she doesnt object. Short on words, but every one counts and rings with purpose. This consideration of numbness continues into the concluding section, entitled July 13, 2013the day Trayvon Martins killer was acquitted. In this poem, which is the only poem inCitizen to have no commas, Rankine begins in the school yard and ends with life imprisoned (101). Interview with Claudia Rankine. The White Review, www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-claudia-rankine/. Rankine narrates another handful of uncomfortable instances in which the unnamed protagonist is forced to quietly endure racism. Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric [Yes, and] When I was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, wracked with shame over some transgression I can no longer remember, I asked my father how, when faced with a choice, to know which decision is the right one. Claudia Rankine uses poetry to correlate directly to accounts of racism making Citizen a profound experience to read. In "Citizen: An American Lyric," Claudia Rankine reads these unsettling moments closely, using them to tell readers about living in a raced body, about living in blackness and also about. 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). Figure 4. She says the things that we have all said and describes situations we have all been in. Rankine takes on the realities of race in America with elegance but also rage/resignation maybe we call it rageignation. Referring to Serena Williams, Rankine states, Yes, and the body has memory. 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. C laudia Rankine's book may or may not be poetry - the question becomes insignificant as one reads on. SHOTTS: It is an utterly amazing honor to work with Claudia. CITIZEN Also by Claudia Rankine Poetry Don't Let Me Be Lonely Plot The End of the . 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? Three years later, Serena Williams wins two gold medals at the 2012 Olympic Games, and when she celebrates by doing a three-second dance on the tennis court, commentators call her immature and classless for Crip-Walking all over the most lily-white place in the world.. The use of such high quality paper could also be read in a different way, one that emphasizes the importance of Black literary and artistic contribution through form, as the expensive pages contain the art of so many racialized artists. Citizen: An American Lyric. 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. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. Sister Evelyn does not know about this cheating arrangement. A hoodie. Refine any search. Find related themes, quotes, symbols, characters, and more. Ms. Rankine said that "part of documenting the micro-aggressions is to understand where the bigger, scandalous aggressions come from.". 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). Not affiliated with Harvard College. "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 . Claudia Rankine's Citizen is an anatomy of American racism in the new millennium, a slender, musical book that arrives with the force of a thunderclap.It's a sequel of sorts to Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004), sharing its subtitle (An American Lyric) and ambidextrous approach: Both books combine poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, words and . Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric. "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." Rankine does more than just allude to the erasureshe also emphasizes it through her usage of white space. She determines that its either because her teacher doesnt care about cheating or, worse, because she never truly saw the protagonist sitting there in the first place. While she highlights a vast number of stories that illustrate the hate crimes that have occurred in the United States during the 21st century, the James Craig Anderson case is prevalent because his heartbreaking story is known by few individuals throughout . 52, no. As the photographs show Zidane register what Materazzi has said, turn around, and approach him, Rankine provides excerpts from the previously mentioned thinkers, including Frantz Fanons thoughts about the history of discrimination against Algerian people in France. Page forty-one describes an incident about a friend rushing to meet with another friend in the "distant neighborhood of Santa Monica . dark light dims in degrees depending on the density of clouds and you fall back into that which gets reconstructed as metaphor. As Michelle Alexander writes in. The rain begins to fall. Rankines deliberate labelling of her work as lyric challenges the historical whiteness of the lyric form. You see Venus move in and put the gorilla effect on. When a man knocks over a woman's son in the subway, he just keeps walking. 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). This was quite an emotional read for me, the instances of racial aggressions that were illustrated in this book being unfortunately all too familiar. Charging. . 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 hasnt noticed. A seventeen-year-old boy in Miami Gardens, FL. They are black property (Rankine 34), black subjects (70), or black objects (93) who do not own anything, not even themselves (146). Where have they gone? (66). The protagonist insists that the man is her friend, reminding the neighbor that he has even met this person, but the neighbor refuses to believe this, saying that he has already called the police. By subverting lyric convention, which normally uses the personal first-person I, Rankine speaks to the inherently unstable (Chan 140) positionality of Black people in America, whose bodily existence is threatened on a daily basis by microaggression which treat the black body either as an invisible object, or as something to be derided, policed or imprisoned (Chan 140). 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. Eventually, the friend stops calling the protagonist by the wrong name, but the protagonist doesnt forget this. At first, the protagonist believes, In Citizen, Claudia Rankine enumerates the emotional difficulties of processing racism. I saw the world through her eyes, a profound experience. Claudia Rankine is an American poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. Chan, Mary-Jean. Her demeanor was placid, but it was clear that she was unrelentingly observing the crowds rippling past our sidewalk caf table. One example is the employer who says he had to hire "a person of color when there are so many great writers out there" (15). They have become a you: You nothing. The collection opens with a reproduction of Kate Clark's 2008 sculpture, Little Girl. 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." A friend called you by the name of her black housekeeper several times. "I am so sorry, so, so sorry" is her response (23). Rankine illustrates this theme of erasure and black invisibility in the visual imagery, whose very inclusion in the work speaks to the poetic innovation of Rankines Citizen. Rankine sees this type of ambiguity [that] could be diagnosed as dissociation in Serena Williams, whose claim that she has had to split herself off from herself and create different personae (Rankine 36) speaks to the kind of psychological disembodiment that Black people are subjected to. "Yes, of course, you say" (20). 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). Graywolf Press, 2014. Rankine seems to ask this question again in a later poem, when she says: Have you seen their faces? By talking about her experiences in second-person, Rankine creates a kind of separation between herself and her experiences. 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). The repetition of this visual motif highlights the existing structures of racism which has allowed for slavery to be born again in the sprawling carceral state of America (Coates 79). In context, the author is referring to the weight of memory, the racial insults, the slights, and the mistreatment by other players. Complete your free account to request a guide. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss thenovel. 134, no. By the time she and her partner get to their house, the police have already come and gone, and the neighbor has apologized to their friend, who was simply on the phone. 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. . Considering Schiller and Arnold Through Claudia Rankine's Citizen Reading Between Lines of Citizen Essays for Citizen: An American Lyric. PDFs of modern translations of every Shakespeare play and poem. Still, the interaction leaves her with a dull headache and wishing she didnt have to pretend that this sort of behavior is acceptable. In this memory, a secondary memory is evoked, but this time it is the author's memory. Although this is meant to help avoid misunderstandings, oftentimes too much is understood. Did you win? her partner asks. Rankines small book of essays tells us the myriad ways we consistently misinterpret others motives, actions, language. Analysis Of Citizen By Claudia Rankine. Creating notes and highlights requires a free LitCharts account. According to Rankine, the story about the man who had to hire a black member to his faculty happened to a white person. 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. Get help and learn more about the design. To demonstrate this, she turns to the career of the famous African American tennis player Serena Williams, pointing to the multiple injustices she has suffered at the hands of the predominantly white tennis community, which judges her unfairly because of her race. the exam room speaking aloud in all of its blatant metaphorsthe huge clock above where my patients sit implacably measuring lifetimes; the space itself narrow and compressed as a sonnetand immediately I'm back to thinking . Rankine also points out instances where underlying racism hurts more than flat out racist remarks. Furthermore, Black people like James Craig Anderson are killed on the road, squashed by a pickup truck (92-95). (That part surprised me.) Each word is a lyrical tribute to Black Americans and all that isn't shouted out on a daily basis. It happens in the schools (6), on the subway (17), and in the line at the grocery store (77), where the non-Black teacher, everyday citizen, or cashier looks straight past the Black person. The general expectation, Rankine upholds, is that people of color must simply move on from their anger, letting racist remarks slide in the name, Claudia Rankines Citizen provides a nuanced look at the many ways in which humanitys racist history brings itself to bear on the present. 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. 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. You can also submit your own questions for Claudia Rankine on our Google form. PDF downloads of all 1699 LitCharts literature guides, and of every new one we publish. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of . Her gripping accounts of racism, through prose and poetry, moved me deeply. This odd and disturbing choice of imagery, which blends a human face with a deer, acts as a visual representation for the dehumanization that Black people are subjected to in America. 137163., doi:10.1017/S0021875817000457. When she objects to his use of this word, he acts like its not a big deal. 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. Black people are being physically erased, through lynching and racist ideology (Rankine 135). The iconic image of American fear. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the winner of the . The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform and stay alive. I met Rankine in New York in mid-October while she was in town for the Poets Forum, presented by the Academy of American Poets, for which she serves as a chancellor. 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). 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 -Graham S. Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. However, Rankin explores this idea of citizenship through alienation. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. Claudia Rankine's book Citizen: An American Lyric was a New York Times bestseller and won many awards. You begin to move around in search of the steps it will take before you are thrown back into your own body, back into your own need to be found. To see the fascinating ways she conceives and evolves her projects is one of the great experiences of my life as an editor. Our, "Sooo much more helpful thanSparkNotes. 1 It is quite unusual in this age . 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. The separation of the Black and white subjects acts as a visual metaphor for the racial segregation of the Jim Crow era, as the Black and white subjects are separatednot only by the wooden frame of the image, but by the page itself. 475490., doi:10.1632/pmla.2019.134.3.475. 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). Teacher Editions with classroom activities for all 1699 titles we cover. Claudia Rankine reads from Citizen The 92nd Street Y, New York 261K subscribers Subscribe 409 Share 32K views 7 years ago Poet Claudia Rankine reads from Citizen=, her recent meditation. Citizen: An American Lyric is the book she was reading. Predictably, my finger hovers over sections that are more like prose than poetry ( that bit on Serena was a highlight). Your neighbor has already called the police. On a plane, a woman and her daughter are reluctant to sit next to you in the row. While this style of narration positions the reader as [a] racist and [a] recipient of racism simultaneously (Adams 58), therefore placing them directly in the narrative, the use of you also speaks to the invisibility and erasure of Black people (Rankine 70-72). When you look around only you remain. Caught in these moments of racism, the Black subject is forced to ruminate on these microaggressions, processing how they have become reduced to that of an animal. In the photograph, there are no black bodies hanging, just the space where the two black bodies once were (Chan 158). In Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine deconstructs racism and reconstructs it as metaphor (Rankine, 5). Perhaps each sigh is drawn into existence to pull in, pull under, who knows; truth be told, you could no more control those sighs than that which brings the sighs about. Teachers and parents! An even more pronouncedly racist moment occurs when the protagonist is in line at Starbucks and the white man standing in front of her calls a group of black teenagers the n-word. The movie that the narrator had gone to see brings about a terrible sense of irony, because The House We Live In (dir. At a glance, the interactions seem to be simple misunderstandings - friends mistaken for strangers, frustrations incorrectly categorized as racial, or just honest mistakes. Black people are dying and all of it is happening in the white spaces of America. Rankine continues to examine the protagonists gravitation toward numbness before abruptly switching to first-person narration on the books final page to recount an interaction she has while lying in bed with her partner. We categorize such moments just as we categorize the incongruous things that people say and who said them. Claudia Rankine zeros in on the microaggressions experienced by non-white people, particularly black females, in the United States. It was a lesson., Instant downloads of all 1699 LitChart PDFs The picture of a deer first appears in Kate Clarks Little Girl (Rankine, 19), a sculpture that grafts the modeled human face of a young girl onto the soft, brown, taxidermied body of an infant caribou (Skillman 428). It's raining outside and the leaves on the trees are more vibrant because of it. By examining the ways the themes are created in the intersection of art and language, Rankine illuminates the constructed nature of racism in her politically charged, highly stylized and subversive Citizen. Claudia Rankine, (born January 1, 1963, Kingston, Jamaica), Jamaican-born American poet, playwright, educator, and multimedia artist whose work often reflected a moral vision that deplored racism and perpetuated the call for social justice. Cerebral Caverns, 2011. 9 likes. Political performance art. The route is . Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. (including. Claudia Rankine (2014). 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. Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets. This is evidenced by Serena Williams' response to Caroline Wozniacki's imitation. You take to wearing sunglasses inside. The therapist is yelling for you to leave, and you manage to tell her that you have an appointment. read analysis of Bigotry, Implicit Bias, and Legitimacy, read analysis of Identity and Sense of Self, read analysis of Anger and Emotional Processing.