Citizen: An American Lyric

Quite literally changed my life.

This book forced me, in a good way, to reflect on so many aspects of my life. I always recommend it to others, and reread it when I can. 

A one-sitting kind of book.

This is incredibly good. Love the way Rankine plays with language and throws around references from classic literature to pop culture. Highly HIGHLY recommend

The parts featuring Rankine's experiences of microaggressions were fantastic, as was the part about Serena Williams - I'm not a tennis person, have never watched tennis, but Citizen brought to life something that I vaguely knew (that tennis has not always been kind to Serena #understatement), and it was clear from a later part of the book that tennis is something Rankine participates in and feels deeply. Glad to have finally read this.

This book gave me palpitations, and that's the point.

I'm embarrassed to say this had been on my Kindle for years. I just now sat down and read it. I think I thought is was going to be unapproachable, or that I was going to have to take notes or something as if I were attending a profound lecture.
Instead, I found myself in a state of awe and I recognized that the words being said in Citizen are real and raw and I had to let go and just experience it.
The stories are impactful but I leave this work with the deep thoughts about who is invisible in this country and who is seen. There is a lot to think about in this little book.

The Book Gods have apparently chosen this week to send me a variety of books that take on the stories of marginalized people, and Citizen is one of the best. It's a book of flash nonfiction mixed with poetry mixed with visual art, and it all combines to share the experiences of black people in today's America. It's difficult to read, at times, painful, sharp, harsh-but-deservedly-so. It's a book that should be read.

Immediately adding to my “to re-read” shelf. The piece on stop and frisk is particularly wonderful.

If not the whole book, than the first section should be essential and required reading for anyone in our country. Really lets you live and feel the experience of aggressions. Powerful.

Such an important book. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, this book may help readers wake up and at least be aware of what millions experience all the time, day in and day out. Whereas Coates is angry, Rankine seems more exhausted by the experience of racial bias. Everyone should read this.

Citizen, by Claudia Rankine

I love that a large part of Citizen is a poetic smackdown over a former colleague's poorly worded poem that he later tried to mansplain away, going as far as to say “this poem is for white people.”

Rankine was having none of that and here creates something that explores how crazy making these small slights can be. A friend who refers to you by the name of her black housekeeper. a colleague bristling over having to hire a person of colour. And then being told not to over react, that it's no big deal.

This daily act of erasure, of quietly moving past these incidents, has a physical toll and she pokes at it here. She will widen her scope to explore Trayvon Martin, James Craig Anderson and the Jena Six.

I like what poetry here can do that novels, long form articles and op eds cannot.