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Citizen: An American Lyric
Citizen: An American Lyric
Citizen: An American Lyric
Audiobook1 hour

Citizen: An American Lyric

Written by Claudia Rankine

Narrated by Allyson Johnson

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 21, 2015
ISBN9781494580513
Citizen: An American Lyric
Author

Claudia Rankine

Award-winning poet, critic and activist Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and she edits the "American Poets in the Twenty-First Century" series. Rankine is the recipient of the fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the Guggenheim Foundation and more. Her work has garnered attention from media such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Globe and the New Yorker. She is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

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Reviews for Citizen

Rating: 4.3009446159244265 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

741 ratings41 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Powerful and poetry. An incredible perspective of being black in the US today.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't read a lot of poetry and am not confident in my ability to accurately give any star ratings so I will just add my few thoughts in response to the book. Citizen: An American Lyric has an interesting way of placing the reader into the body of a Black person. It circles wide and puts "you" the reader, whatever your race in life may be, into the life and mind and living experience of a Black person both women and men. Powerful writing I would say.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So poignant - well performed - encapsulating!

    thoroughly enjoyed :)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very powerful writing,, speaks to me as a black woman. If you've ever felt alienated and alone in this white supremacist world, give this a listen.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Claudia Rankine creates lasting images that burn feelings into my heart. There are no lectures here but many, many lessons. Deeply moving.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is in your face and makes you listen to what it has to say. The prose was stunning
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting read. It took some time to get used to the flow of the book. It is very thought provoking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a very emotional read.
    You see everyday little things people don't actually mean to say or do and yet they reflect such clear discrimination. the examples here will surely be something plenty of people can relate to.
    Everybody should read this and start making a conscience of their actions.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Powerful, brutal and necessary. This book is an abstract experience that allows you a glimpse into the aggression, fear, and oppression that Black people face every day. It is painful to hear, as it is meant to be. It provides an idea, a window to observe something that white people will never experience, but should seek to understand and change.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This should be required reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This isn't a review but an observation, bearing on my project Writing with Images -- I am studying the history of fiction and other narratives with images. Given the fact that Rankine's interest is life as an African-American woman, and the racism with all the ordinary, sometimes daily insults, condescension, unthought disrespect, half-noticed slurs, and other painful experiences, it does not make sense that most of her illustrations are by successful artists. There is very little reference to the artists in the text, which I think has to lead to the conclusion that she thinks their work is the best illustration of her concerns. But is it? Carrie Mae Weems, Nick Cave, or Glenn Ligon often have very different agendas and interests, and their work raises specific issues that are not mentioned in the text -- and the reason for their absence is itself not articulatedFor me, the only way to read the illustrations in "Citizen" as apposite to the text is to think of them generically, as art, and not to notice, or to forget, their different careers, symbolism, and narratives. A few pictures are from the media, like the one of Caroline Wozniacki pretending to be Serena Williams (p. 36), or Hennessy Youngman (p. 23). Those fit the narrative perfectly. I wonder if a more careful selection of images, and more passages in the text meditating on the images and their meanings, might not have raised the stakes for the narrative itself, by adding a level of reflection about what visual materials best give voice to the texts' concerns.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Simply beautiful. It is poetic, thought-provoking, and at several points it left me breathless. Claudia Rankine is a gem.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I first read this about two years ago and to be honest, I don't think I fully appreciated it at the time. At this point in history, following the brutal murder of George Floyd, Claudia Rankine's poetry hit me really hard. I am trying to educate myself on topics of racism, police brutality and the everyday microaggressions faced by black people every day. I have the privilege of being able to choose to learn about these things through books instead of in my day-to-day experiences.

    When I listened to this book the first time, it was the essays/poems about Serena Williams that I understood the most. Racism in sport is something that has been seen throughout history and the fact that Serena Williams has got to where she is in her sport despite that is astounding. As someone who does not follow tennis, I wasn't actually aware of the incidents examined in this book but the way Rankine wrote about it made me feel so angry that this happened to Williams, and continues to happen.

    Anger was the overall feeling I had throughout this book, along with profound sadness. Claudia Rankine includes several pieces about black men killed at the hands of the police or other white supremacists. These are so painful and raw. This book was written 6 years ago and yet nothing has changed. In fact, the perpetrators feel emboldened to enact these heinous crimes in broad daylight.

    I would highly recommend this collection. Having reread it for a second time I definitely understood more and felt that Rankine's economic use of language to describe important themes makes this required reading.

    5 out of 5 stars!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short and powerful, illuminating the constant barrage of aggression (micro and macro) that faces black people in America (and elsewhere of course)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    audio nonfiction in verse, ~1.5 hrsdaily instances of racism and hostility and their inevitable cumulative effects on the recipients (and readers), written by award-winning poet. As an audiobook, the text reads similarly to lyrical prose, so if poetry isn't particularly your favorite genre you might try listening instead.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was aware of how influential this book has been recently! However, since I blank on poetry, and this seems very much like poetry at times, I think I might not have made the connections within this book that I should have. It jumps around so much for me. But again, it probably went over my dim head. But I could tell there were some gems in there. If you'd like to read another book about race from a poet, I'd set this on the shelf beside 'Minor Feelings' by Cathy Park Hong.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Rankine's words personify the experience of being Black in America. Struggled to read. I feel I should just shut up. I could be any one of those people who just let an awkward comment slip out of my mouth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book came to my attention because it is on both the Vulture 100 best Books of the 21st century and Guardian top 100 best books of 21st century. This is classified as poetry. It is essay and the structure is creative. From Wikipedia; Citizen stretches the conventions of traditional lyric poetry by interweaving several forms of text and media into a collective portrait of racial relations in the United States.[2] Love, Heather (2016-09-01). "Small Change: Realism, Immanence, and the Politics of the Micro". Modern Language Quarterly. 77 (3): 419–445.In the book, the author addresses a variety of incidents and invisibility, Serena Williams tennis player, shootings of unarmed black men, the London riots. Intermixed with various art and digital media to informed the thoughts/subjects. It is an angry book.Quotes that I liked; Quote by James Baldwin, "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers." The author adds...He might have been channeling Dostoyevsky's statement that "we have all the answers, Its the questions we do not know.". I also really liked this sentence by the author; "A man, a novelist with the face of the England sky, full of weather....".There are 7 chapters1. Microaggressions2. Hennessy Youngman, a u-tube character and Serena Williams, tennis player.3. microaggressions and the nature of racist language4. transition of sighs into aches, the nature of language, memory, and watching tennis matches in silence.5. poem on self-identity interspersed with more microaggressions.6. series of scripts for "situation videos" created in collaboration with John Lucas on. Hurricane Katrina, the shootings of Trayvon Martin and James Craig Anderson, the Jena Six, the 2011 England riots in the wake of the death of Mark Duggan, stop-and-frisk, Zinedine Zidane's headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final, and the verbal error during Barack Obama's first inauguration as President of the United States.7. meditation on race, the body, language and various incidents in the life of the author. The book is interspersed with images of various paintings, drawings, sculptures and screen grabs.This book has received numerous awards including Winner of National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Solid, though it gets a bit dull towards the end. I am stricken with fear that the Nick Cave piece included here is included as an example of a white man using a 'black' 'body' for self-aggrandisement. Should I try to defend him? Should I just delete all those MP3s? I don't know.

    In any case, I taught this as part of a class called 'What is Art?', and the students loved it. Highly recommended to any teachers out there.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This volume consists of poems, prose poems and essays about being African-American in today’s America. It’s a punch-to-the gut sort of work – the racism, both overt and microagressions from strangers and friends is overwhelming and can take your breath away.Memorable lines:“Because white men can't police their imagination black men are dying”On being stopped by police: “You are not the guy. You are always the guy, because you fit the description and there is only one description. You are always the guy there is only one description.”“The world is wrong. You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard.”"Before it happened, it had happened and happened. As a black body in the States, your response was necessary if you were to hold on to the fiction that this was an event 'wrongfully ordinary,' therefore a snafu within the ordinary."First five star read of the year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Claudia Rankine, an accomplished poet, has aptly described this book as lyrical prose. But make no mistake, her poetic voice comes through loud and clear. Arranged in seven parts, she has collected events and encounters in the life of American citizens, and arranged them to vividly portray the experience of black people, and especially black men, in America today.

    Rankine describes incidents ranging from the slights that friends and acquaintances make without realizing they are making ("What did you just say?") to the blatant racist language and violent stereotyping we see all too often in the media. All are treated in vivid prose and accompanied by provocative artwork - a image of a street sign designating Jim Crow Lane; a tennis star who stuffed her tennis outfit with towels front and back to imitate Serena Williams. Included in this volume are scripts she has written to accompany "Situation" videos produced with her husband John Lucas, a documentary filmmaker. Some of these videos can be viewed in various places on the internet. (Search for Situation video). Despite our history and the strides made in race relations, she insists we must continue to make strong advances.

    Very powerful meditation on what it means to be a black citizen in America today.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    These lines from the book jacket say it all: "The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging...." Rankine's expositions are either acutely relatable or not. I suspect that if a reader isn't nodding his or her head in knowingness, then the entire work must be for that person enigmatically shrouded. For one it may be reality, for the other a reality check.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't read enough poetry to judge whether this qualifies as a good or less good example of the modern form. But as a commentary on being Black in 21st century America this is a powerful document. I was most moved by the section on Serena Williams but every little story was heartbreaking and terrible.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Citizen is an exploration of attitudes, a loose leaf dispatch on race. Is it a meditation on anger? On images and bodies?Is language as violent as memory? Is it privilege to be oblivious?

    I said aloud while reading that, “my mental misanthropy is presently blooming.”

    I stumbled upon this book this morning, fully unaware. It was digested in a futbol half.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am a “liberal” “white” person. We are all so free with labels. Er think we know what everyone knows. And that everyone knows what we know. Or they should...but please don’t should on me. This book made me squirm. When I open my mouth, are my good intentions misunderstood? Pure intentions! In this day of amazing numbers of black men being gunned down by police acceptable?As we used to say about men sexually harassing women, is this OUR problem, that they can’t keep it zipped up? Ranking now points out that white [men/policemen] need to control their imaginations when confronting unarmed black men.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm not sure how to describe this short book--poetry? prose? screenplay? It won the National Book Critics Award in Poetry and was also a finalist for the same award in Criticism. It also won the NAACP Image Award, as well as being a finalist for several other awards.It contains, among other things, a long story about a series of bad calls made against Serena Williams in 2004, 2009, and 2011, all apparently involving racial bias. She discusses friends who have crossed the line with her when they feel entitled to joke about racial matters (i.e. "nappy hair"), or those who have spoken with her on the phone, who express surprise to discover she's not white when they meet her in real life, and other indignities suffered merely because she is black, such as the store clerk asking her if she's sure her credit card will work.She takes a series of quotes taken from CNN after Katrina, and presents them as a poem, which includes Barbara Bush's unforgettable comment, "And so many people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working out well for them."There is a prose poem/script in memory of Trayvon Martin which ends with the following:"because white men can'tpolice their imaginationblack people are dying."This was like a scrapbook of various meditations on race. Many of the individual pieces were moving and unforgettable. However, overall, I found it sometimes disorganized, and some of the pieces did not engage me. (Some seemed to be intended to be presented visually, as in a video). Still, I could see that it is an important work.3 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm cognizant of the fact that I don't read enough books by women of color and that I read very few works of poetry. I decided to kill two birds with one stone by reading Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. (Also, it's National Poetry Month so it was a no-brainer.) This book is especially relevant right now with the state of our world being what it is: a shambles. Citizen is essentially Claudia's exploration of what it is to be a black woman living in America as told through poetic verse. It is beautiful, tender, terrible, tragic, and real. She doesn't shy away from such topics as police brutality or the prevalence of feeling like an outsider. This book is a personal revelation and a public admonishment all rolled into one neat package Coupled with her verses are historical quotes and pencil drawn (I think?) artwork. What better way to begin your foray into poetry than by reading a book that challenges the status quo and speaks from the heart? If you'd like to maybe see the world through a different set of eyes Citizen is your golden ticket with many stops along the way. 9/10I made a note of this quote on page 89 to give you an idea of just how powerful her words are: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 where we open our mouth to speak, blossoms, o blossoms, no place coming out, brother, dear brother, that kind of blue.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I bought this because I wanted to read it but I was a little afraid to read it but I wanted to read it.

    Once I started reading it, I couldn't stop. I read it walking to work and when I absolutely had to put it down I walked around aching and hollow, eyes half-seeing for a while.

    I googled a lot of things.

    There is a lot of Serena in here, and as I was reading this, there was a lot of Serena in the news again because Serena is amazing and a lot of damn fools in the world cannot reconcile her amazingness and her blackness.

    As amazing as the poems are about Trayvon, about Eric Garner, about Michael Brown, it is the poetry about casual racism, about microaggressions that slays. The exhaustion in them is palpable. The exhaustion of "Did that person really just say that?" "Do they know what they said?" "Did they mean that?" "Is this reasonable?" "Do I have the energy/standing/emotional fortitude to call them on it?"

    Brutal. And very, very necessary.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "At the end of a brief phone conversation, you tell the manager you are speaking with that you will come by his office to sign the form. When you arrive and announce yourself, he blurts out, I didn't know you were black!I didn't mean to say that, he then says.Aloud, you say.What? he asks.You didn't mean to say that aloud.Your transaction goes swiftly after that."******"I knew what ever was in front of me was happening and then the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always fitting the description."******"because white men can'tpolice their imaginationblack men are dying"******"Your friend is speaking to your neighbor when you arrive home. The four police cars are gone. Your neighbor has apologized to your friend and now is apologizing to you. Feeling somewhat responsible for the actions of your neighbor, you clumsily tell your friend that the next time he wants to talk on the phone he should just go in the backyard. He looks at you a long minute before saying he can speak on the phone wherever he wants. Yes, of course, you say. Yes, of course."Being black in America. Claudia Rankine brings that home in a way I haven't experienced before, in Citizen: An American Lyric. It's an amazing, heartbreaking book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Not quite poetry in the traditional sense, thoughtful and powerful writing.