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 . 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. No longer can 'you' abide by these misunderstandings, because you understand them too well. Rankine also points out instances where underlying racism hurts more than flat out racist remarks. "Citizen: An American Lyric Section I Summary and Analysis". "I am so sorry, so, so sorry" is her response (23). Our, "Sooo much more helpful thanSparkNotes. Black people are facing a triple erasure: first through microaggresions and racist language that renders them second-class citizens; then through lynching and other forms of violence that murders the black body; and lastly, through forgetting. Citizen is definitely a must read for everyone, especially if one day we hope to annihilate racism all together. Feeling awkward, the protagonist tells her friend that he should take his calls in the backyard next time. In Claudia Rankines, Citizen: An American Lyric, she explores racism in a unique way. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. How do sports in particular encourage spectators and officials to assume influence or even ownership over the bodies of. Find related themes, quotes, symbols, characters, and more. PDFs of modern translations of every Shakespeare play and poem. Until African-Americans are seen as human beings worthy of an I, they will continue to be a you in Americaunable to enjoy all the rights of their citizenship. In an article discussing the Black Lives/White Backgrounds of Rankines Citizen, Bella Adams states: the blank and typically white backgrounds on which Rankines words and images appear (69) is representative of the hierarchical racial formation that is rendered nearly invisible by its colour (white) and positioning (background) in the contemporary, so-called colour-blind or post-racial United States (55). 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. 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 seems to ask this question again in a later poem, when she says: Have you seen their faces? Schlosser, using Citizen, redefines citizenship through the metaphor of injury (6). Rankine believes that Black people are not sick, / [they] are injured (143). PDF downloads of all 1699 LitCharts literature guides, and of every new one we publish. Returning to the unnamed protagonist, Rankine narrates a scene in which the protagonist is talking to a fellow artist at a party in England. What that something else . Graywolf Press, 2014. Rankine will answer . Citizen by Claudia Rankine is an exceptional book which is much deserving of all the awards it has won. The repetition of the same image highlights the racial profiling of Black men: And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description (Rankine 105, 106, 108, 109). Suddenly you smell good again, like in Catholic school. Her work has appeared recently in the Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post. At Like in Sections IV and III, Rankine puts special focus on the body and its potentials to be made known. 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. This is evidenced by Serena Williams' response to Caroline Wozniacki's imitation. A nuanced reflection on race, trauma, and belonging that brings together text and image in unsettling, powerful ways. 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. 3, 2019, p. 419-457. Many of the interactions also involve an implicit invitation to take part in these microaggressive acts. 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). African-Americans are still experiencing hardships every day that stem from slavery such as racial profiling, and stereotyping. "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. (143). This is a poignant powerful work of art. 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. Perhaps this dissociation, seen in the literariness of Rankines poetics and use of you, speaks to the kind of erasure of self that happens when you experience racism every day. Listened as part of the Diverse Spines Reading Challenge. (84-85); Did you see their faces? (86). It begins by introducing an unnamed black protagonist, whom Rankine refers to as "you.". By doing so, he accounts for the ways microaggression pushes minorities down, and often precludes the opportunity for a response. 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. You can also submit your own questions for Claudia Rankine on our Google form. Graywolf, 169 pp., $20.00 (paper) Nick Laird. A neighbor calls while you are watching the film The House We Live In to say that "a menacing black guy" (20) is walking around your house. Below are questions to help guide your discussions as you read the book over the next month. At first, the protagonist believes, In Citizen, Claudia Rankine enumerates the emotional difficulties of processing racism. A hoodie. Rankine challenges this norm in more than one way. 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. 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). Refine any search. Courtesy of John Lucas. 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. The iconic image of American fear. Another stop that. Each word is a lyrical tribute to Black Americans and all that isn't shouted out on a daily basis. Claudia Rankine on Blackness as the Second Person. Guernica, 5 Jan. 2017, www.guernicamag.com/blackness-as-the-second-person/. The sections study different incidents in American culture and also includes a bit about France (black, blanc beurre). 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. As the chapter progresses, so does the strength of the negative feeling produced. GradeSaver, 15 August 2016 Web. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. A seventeen-year-old boy in Miami Gardens, FL. Usually you are nestled under blankets and the house is empty. 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). 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). More books than SparkNotes. C laudia Rankine's book may or may not be poetry - the question becomes insignificant as one reads on. Instant PDF downloads. It was a thing hunted and the hunting continues on a certain level (Skillman 429). "Yes, of course, you say" (20). 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. 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. You are in Catholic school and a girl who you can't remember is looking over your shoulder as you take a test. 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. 9 likes. The picture is of a well-manicured suburban neighborhood with sizable houses in the background. Creating notes and highlights requires a free LitCharts account. Discover Claudia Rankine famous and rare quotes. 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. Best to drive through the moment instead of dwelling on it. And this ugliness is some of what being an American citizen means. 137163., doi:10.1017/S0021875817000457. 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. Coates refers to these two institutions as arms of the same beastfear and violence were the weaponry of both (33). In the beginning of this poem, Rankine asks you to recall a time when you felt absolutely nothing. Another sigh. The artwork which is featured on the coverDavid Hammons In the Hood depicts a black hood floating in a white space. It was timely fifty years ago. The destination is illusory. It's raining outside and the leaves on the trees are more vibrant because of it. Rankine does more than just allude to the erasureshe also emphasizes it through her usage of white space. Rankine moves on to present situation video[s] commemorating the deaths of a number of black men who were killed because of the color of their skin, including Trayvon Martin and James Craig Anderson. Claudia Rankine is an absolute master of poetry and uses her gripping accounts of racism, through poetry to share a deep message. This has many meanings. Time and Distance Overcome. The Iowa Review, vol. The fact that only the hood of the hoodie exists, with the seam rips still evident and the strings still hanging, alludes to the historical lynching of Black people in America, which has erased and dismembered the black body. Figure 2. I can only point feebly at bits I liked without having the language to say why. The narrator contemplates why this person feels comfortable saying this in front of her. Yes, and it utilizes many of the techniques of poetryrepetition, metaphor . The large white space on top of the photograph seems to be pushing the image down, crushing the small black space. When a man knocks over a woman's son in the subway, he just keeps walking. Black Blue Boy, 1997.Courtesy of Carrie Mae Weems. 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. 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). The heads in Cerebral Caverns become a visual metaphor for Rankines poetry, connecting the slavery of the past to modern-day incarceration. You exhaust yourself looking into the blue light. By my middling review, I definitely dont mean to take away anything from. Refine any search. View Citizen_ An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine.pdf from ENG L499 at Indiana University, Bloomington. Rankine, Claudia. 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. 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. 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. When the clerk points out that the woman was next in line, the man responded, "Oh, I didn't see you.". Their citizenship which took many centuries to gain does not protect them from these hardships. 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. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Rankines use of form, visual imagery, and metaphor are not only used to emphasize key themes of erasure, disembodiment, systemic hunting, and the mass incarceration of Black people, but it also works to construct the history of Black citizenship from the time of slavery to Jim Crow, to modern-day mass incarceration. By paper choice alone, Rankine seems to be commenting on the political, social, and economic position of Black life in America. "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." The world says stop that. Citizen: An American Lyric Summary. 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. These two different examples illustrate various scales of erasure. Skillman, Nikki. Analysis Of Citizen By Claudia Rankine. 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. Overview Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric is a genre-bending meditation on race, racism, and citizenship in 21st-century America. Amid historic times, Claudia Rankine feels a deep sense of obligation. 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. Copyright 1999 - 2023 GradeSaver LLC. The structure, which breaks up the poetics with white space and visual imagery, uses space and mixed media to convey these themes. 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. When she objects to his use of this word, he acts like its not a big deal. Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. For Serena, the daily diminishment is a low flame, a . PDFs of modern translations of every Shakespeare play and poem. A friend mentions a theoretical construct of the self divided into the 'self self' and the 'historical self'. You see Venus move in and put the gorilla effect on. Courtesy of Radcliffe Bailey and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. . Hoping he was well-intentioned, the woman answered . Project MUSEmuse.jhu.edu/article/732928.Sdf, The Dissolving Blues of Metaphor: Rankines Reconstruction of Racism as Metaphor in Citizen: An American Lyric, www.guernicamag.com/blackness-as-the-second-person/. By merging poetic language with visual imagery, and subverting lyric convention in pursuit of her own poetic structure and form, Rankine forces us to see the erasure of Black people in every aspect of Citizen. 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. Rankine writes from great depth, personal experiences, and also from a greater, inclusive point of view. What did she just do? In particular, she considers the effect anger has on an individual, illustrating the frustrating conundrum many people of color experience when they encounter small instances of bigotry (often called microaggressions) and are expected to simply let these things go. Share Claudia Rankine quotations about language, past and feelings. To see the fascinating ways she conceives and evolves her projects is one of the great experiences of my life as an editor. Ta-Nehisi Coates, journalist and author of Between the World and Me (2015),argues that: The forgetting is habit, is yet another necessary component of the Dream. 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. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. They have become a you: You nothing. LitCharts Teacher Editions. 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. This reminds you of a conversation contrasting the pros and cons of sentences beginning with yes, and or yes, but. We live in a culture as full of microaggressions as breaking new headlines, and Citizen brings it home. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. From this description, it is clear that Rankine sees the I as a symbol for a human being, for she later states: the I has so much power; its insane (71). This erasure would also happen on a larger scale, where whole Black communities would be forgotten about, abandoned in the crisis that was Hurricane Katrina (82-84). A friend called you by the name of her black housekeeper several times. Instant PDF downloads. 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). In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. Oxford Dictionary defines the word "citizen" as "a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized." Rankine challenges this definition in two ways. No one else is seeking. It is agonizing to display our flayed skin to the salt of another day. Published in 2014, Citizen combines prose, poetry, and images to paint a provocative portrait of the African American experience and racism in the so-called "post-racial" United States. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!, This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. Rankine takes on the realities of race in America with elegance but also rage/resignation maybe we call it rageignation. It shows the back of a stop sign with a street sign on top labeled 'Jim Crow Rd'. On a plane, a woman and her daughter are reluctant to sit next to you in the row. 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. The emptinessthe lack of a corpse or a live body or faceis a literal representation of the erasure of African-Americans. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Unable to let herself show anger, she suffers in private. Ms. Rankine said that "part of documenting the micro-aggressions is to understand where the bigger, scandalous aggressions come from.". For Rankine, there is no escaping the path from school to prison. Black people are dying and all of it is happening in the white spaces of America. Stand where you are. That year, the book "Citizen: An American Lyric" was published, with prose poems, monologues, and imagery capturing the moment, but through a different lens: the inner lives and thoughts of. . Teacher Editions with classroom activities for all 1699 titles we cover. 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. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. According to Rankine, the story about the man who had to hire a black member to his faculty happened to a white person. The wrong words enter your day like a bad egg in your mouth and puke runs down your blouse, a dampness drawing your stomach in toward your rib cage. You'll be able to access your notes and highlights, make requests, and get updates on new titles. Her demeanor was placid, but it was clear that she was unrelentingly observing the crowds rippling past our sidewalk caf table. 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. As a woman of color, I am always concerned about bringing a raced text into a classroom, especially at universities that are less diverse. Hearing this, the protagonist wonders why her friend feels comfortable saying this to her, but she doesnt object. Sharma, Meara. There is, in other words, no way of avoiding the initial pain. 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. Citizen: An American Lyric Quotes and Analysis "Sometimes the moon is missing and beyond the windows the low, gray ceiling seems approachable. 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). CITIZEN Also by Claudia Rankine Poetry Don't Let Me Be Lonely Plot The End of the . Get help and learn more about the design. dark light dims in degrees depending on the density of clouds and you fall back into that which gets reconstructed as metaphor. These are called microaggressions. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. This emphasis on injury, of being a wounded animal (59, 65), all work in conjunction with the first image of the deer. After a tense pause, he tells her that he can take his calls wherever he wants, and the protagonist is instantly embarrassed for telling him otherwise. 52, no. But then again I suppose it's a really strong point that her consciousness is so occupied by overt racism that she sees subtle racism everywhere -- "because white men cant police their imaginations, black men are dying," particularly -- even where it likely may not exist. Both this series and Citizen combine intentional and unintentional racism to awaken the viewers to such injustices present in their own lives. Citizen: An American Lyric essays are academic essays for citation. By rejecting previous poetic structures in favour of a new poetic form, Rankine forces us to think about the possibility and the importance of creating a new social frameworkone that serves its Black citizens, rather than erasing them. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Medically, "John Henryism . Predictably, my finger hovers over sections that are more like prose than poetry ( that bit on Serena was a highlight). In the final sections of the book, the second-person protagonist notices that nobody is willing to sit next to a certain black man on the train, so she takes the seat. ", After reading Citizen, its hard not to hear Rankines voice as I ride the subway, walk around NYC, or even pick up other books. You'll also get updates on new titles we publish and the ability to save highlights and notes. In this instance, the black body becomes even more animal-like. Read it all in one flow. 134, no. 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. Ominously, it got rave reviews from Hilton Als - whose recent memoir gave me similar migraines. 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. By Parul Sehgal, Bookforum, Dec/Jan 2015. 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