The protagonist is reacting to an encounter with "the wrong words" as one would to the taste of "a bad egg.". Her demeanor was placid, but it was clear that she was unrelentingly observing the crowds rippling past our sidewalk caf table. 8389., doi:10.17077/0021-065x.6414. We categorize such moments just as we categorize the incongruous things that people say and who said them. 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. ", After reading Citizen, its hard not to hear Rankines voice as I ride the subway, walk around NYC, or even pick up other books. Considering what she calls the social death of history, Rankine suggests that contemporary culture has largely adopted an ahistorical perspective, one that fails to recognize the lasting effects of bigotry. While Rankine recognizes that sighing is natural and almost inevitable, it is not the iteration of a free being [for] what else to liken yourself to but an animal, the ruminant kind? (60). Rankine does more than just allude to the erasureshe also emphasizes it through her usage of white space. 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. As Michelle Alexander writes in. Teacher Editions with classroom activities for all 1699 titles we cover. This was quite an emotional read for me, the instances of racial aggressions that were illustrated in this book being unfortunately all too familiar. This symbolism of the deer, which signifies the hunting and dehumanization of Black people, is emphasized throughout the work through the repetition of sighing, moaning, and allusions to injury: To live through the days sometimes you moan like deer. These structures which imprison Black people are referenced in Rankines poetics and seen in the visual motifs of frames, or cells, referenced in the three photographs of Radcliffe Baileys Cerebral Caverns(Rankine 119), John Lucas Male II & I(96-97), and in Carrie Mae Weems Black Blue Boy (102-103), which frame and imprison the black body: My brothers are notorious. Short on words, but every one counts and rings with purpose. A cough launches another memory into your consciousness. Whether Rankine is talking about tennis or going out to dinner, or spinning words until youre not sure which direction youre facing, there is strength, anger, and a call for white readers like myself to see whats in front of us and do better, be better. You are told to use the back entrance of her house because this is where patients go to get trauma counseling. Teaching Citizen by Claudia Rankine is a perfect text for such spaces. This sighing is characterized as self-preservation, (Rankine 60) and is repeated multiple times (62, 75, 151), just as breath or breathing is also repeated (55, 107, 156). Continuing to detail the experiences of this unnamed protagonist, Rankine narrates an instance later in the young womans life, when her friend frequently calls her by the name of her own housekeeper. Jenn Northington. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the winner of the . I Am Invested in Keeping Present the Forgotten Bodies.. Believer Magazine, 28 June 2020, believermag.com/logger/2014-12-10-i-am-invested-in-keeping-present-the-forgotten/. The door is locked so you go to the front door where you are met with a fierce shout. Not affiliated with Harvard College. So much racism is unconscious and springs from imagined . Considering Schiller and Arnold Through Claudia Rankine's Citizen Reading Between Lines of Citizen Her son went to another prestigious university instead. Still, the interaction leaves her with a dull headache and wishing she didnt have to pretend that this sort of behavior is acceptable. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Lyric Reading Revisited: Passion, Address, and Form in Citizen. American Literary History, vol. The emptinessthe lack of a corpse or a live body or faceis a literal representation of the erasure of African-Americans. The book invites readers to consider how people conceive of their own identities and, more specifically, what this process looks like for black people cultivating a sense of self in the context of Americas fraught racial dynamics. 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). This metaphor becomes even more complex when analyzing the way Rankine describes the stopping-and-frisking of Black people by the police. "Yes, of course, you say" (20). In their fight against the weight of nonexistence (Rankine 139), Black people do not have the authority of an I. 38, no. 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. Medically, "John Henryism . I pray it is not timely fifty years from now. Cerebral Caverns, 2011. Courtesy of Radcliffe Bailey and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. The protagonist knows that her friend makes this mistake because the housekeeper is the only other black person in her life, but neither of them mention this. By choosing to give space to the white space on the page, Rankine forces us to pause and sit with these moments of everyday racism. "IN CITIZEN, I TRIED TO PICK SITUATIONS AND MOMENTS THAT MANY PEOPLE SHARE, AS OPPOSED TO SOME IDIOSYNCRATIC OCCURRENCE THAT MIGHT ONLY HAPPEN TO ME." Claudia Rankine was born in 1963, in Jamaica, and immigrated to the United States as a child. The narrator assures her: "The world is wrong. The same structures from the past exist today, but perhaps it has become less obvious, as seen in the almost invisible frames of Weems photograph. Claudia Rankine (2014). Citizen by Claudia Rankine Themes Acceptance Identity Rankine argues that African Americans have had to sweep aside these microagressions and to accept how they are treated in order to be a good citizen, to survive, to not be the targets of law enforcement. Nor are the higher echelons of the academic and literary worlds any insulation against such behavior. -Graham S. Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. What did she just do? In the foreground there stands a sign indicating that the neighborhood juts out off a street called Jim Crow Roadevidence that the countrys racist past is still woven throughout the structures of everyday life. Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. Claudia Rankine Citizen: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine 32-page comprehensive study guide Chapter-by-chapter summaries and multiple sections of expert analysis The ultimate resource for assignments, engaging lessons, and lively book discussions Access Full GuideDownloadSave Featured Collections Popular Book Club Picks 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). The route is often . The text becomes a metaphor for the way racism in America (content) is embedded in the existing social structures of systemic racism (form). The picture is of a well-manicured suburban neighborhood with sizable houses in the background. Returning to the unnamed protagonist, Rankine narrates a scene in which the protagonist is talking to a fellow artist at a party in England. Rankine writes from great depth, personal experiences, and also from a greater, inclusive point of view. Rankine concludes that this social conditioning of being hunted leads to injury, which then leads to sighing and moaning (Rankine 42). There is, in other words, no way of avoiding the initial pain. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. Find related themes, quotes, symbols, characters, and more. A nuanced reflection on race, trauma, and belonging that brings together text and image in unsettling, powerful ways. You take to wearing sunglasses inside. When you look around only you remain. Clearly - from the blurb and the plaudits - this is an 'important work' - and my failure to 'get it' is a failure to police my mind (or something). This consideration of numbness continues into the concluding section, entitled July 13, 2013the day Trayvon Martins killer was acquitted. 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). At a glance, the interactions seem to be simple misunderstandings - friends mistaken for strangers, frustrations incorrectly categorized as racial, or just honest mistakes. 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. They have not been to prison. . 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. 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. For instance, when she and her partner go to a movie one night, they ask their frienda black manto pick up their child from school. I repeat what Bill Kerwin reminded me of in his review of this book: At a Trump rally, there is a woman sitting behind him reading a book while he speaks. At another event, the protagonist listens to the philosopher Judith Butler speak about why language is capable of hurting people. Urban danger. Our, "Sooo much more helpful thanSparkNotes. "Citizen" begins by recounting, in the second person, a string of racist incidents experienced by Rankine and friends of hers, the kind of insidious did-that-really-just-happen affronts that. Reviewed: Citizen: An American Lyric. 1, 2008, pp. By utilizing form, visual imagery, and poetry, Rankine enables us to see the systemic oppression of Black people by the state. This disrupts the historically white lyric form even further because she is adapting and changing the lyric form to include her Black identity and perspective. The erasure of Black people is a theme that is referenced throughout Citizen.Rankine describes this erasure of self as systemic, as ordinary (32). The artwork which is featured on the coverDavid Hammons In the Hood depicts a black hood floating in a white space. As a woman of color, I am always concerned about bringing a raced text into a classroom, especially at universities that are less diverse. 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). Claudia Rankine, Citizen, An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014). Read the Study Guide for Citizen: An American Lyric, Considering Schiller and Arnold Through Claudia Rankines 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. In particular, the narrator considers what her own voice sounds like. Graywolf Press, 2014. The sections study different incidents in American culture and also includes a bit about France (black, blanc beurre). In her book-length poem "Citizen," from 2014, the writer Claudia Rankine probed some of the nuances and contradictions of being a Black American.Her focus fell on what it means to be erased . 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. 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 . 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. At Like in Sections IV and III, Rankine puts special focus on the body and its potentials to be made known. 52, no. Claudia Rankine is an American poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. No, this is just a friend of yours, you explain to your neighbor, but it's too late. But when the interactions are put together, the reader can understand the "headache-producing" (13) capacity of these interactions. I nearly always would rather spend time with a novel. Each word is a lyrical tribute to Black Americans and all that isn't shouted out on a daily basis. 134, no. Creating notes and highlights requires a free LitCharts account. The iconic image of American fear. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Rankine describes these everyday events of erasure in small blocks of black text, each on its own white page. Struggling with distance learning? 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. Citizen by Claudia Rankine is an exceptional book which is much deserving of all the awards it has won. 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. 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). The subject matter is explicit, yet the writing possesses a self-containment, whether in verse [] 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. Rankine, Claudia. The wearer of the hood no longer exists, and the now empty hood has been cut off or detached from the rest of the body. Racist language, however, erase[s] you as a person (49), and this furious erasure (142) of Black people strips them of their individuality and the rights that come with an I that are given during citizenship. The Question and Answer section for Citizen: An American Lyric is a great (Rankine 59). As the chapter progresses, so does the strength of the negative feeling produced. 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. Citizen: An American Lyric essays are academic essays for citation. Rankines small book of essays tells us the myriad ways we consistently misinterpret others motives, actions, language. Sometimes you sigh. Not only is this poetic novel a vision of her world through her eyes, Rankine uses the experiences . Teachers and parents! She repeats this again when she says, youre not sick, not crazy / not angry, not sad / Its just this, youre injured (145). In Claudia Rankines, Citizen: An American Lyric, she explores racism in a unique way. 475490., doi:10.1632/pmla.2019.134.3.475. 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). 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 . Yes, and leads to a narrow pathway with no forks in the road. Copyright 1999 - 2023 GradeSaver LLC. 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