Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine, a Jamaican born poet, is the author of several popular poems which were recognized widely across America. She also writes essays and has written two plays to her credit. She holds the high position of Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. Her latest title winning works include, “Citizen: An American Lyric” which brought her to the finals of the National Book Award. It also made her the winner of National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and two more awards. She won several other awards for her other works as well. The poem “Citizen” is the only poem to make it to the New York Time bestsellers under the category of non-fiction (Poetry Foundation).
The poem “Citizen: An American Lyric” was received with much open hearts and it proved to be a game changer in the genre of poems. It was widely recognized in several award functions. It won her seven awards and it made it to the finals of two more awards. In the beginning one may be confused whether it is a form of poetry or prose, but as one reads on it dawns upon us that this question is insignificant. This bold book brings to light the incidents of racial discrimination found in each and every day to day activities faced by the black people in America. The book seized most of the awards due to the starling truth it tells in a bold and frank manner.
She recounts the countless instances where the black people are not respected, even insulted, by the ‘citizens of other races’, as she calls them, meet together. Some may be done unintentionally, but most of the incidents were intentional. People use subtle, behind the back techniques to degrade the dark colored people in the current generation. Rankine calls them as ‘micro-aggressions’. In the interview to Meara Sharma, from Guernica, Rankine recounts the interview process which she did to collect information for her book. She said that she concentrated mostly on the people who were at the receiving end of micro-aggression and their reaction to these incidents. Numerous incidents have been recorded in the book, which at the most, is sickening to hear. She recounts an incident where a white mother tactfully whispers in her daughter’s ear not sit next to a black passenger. She does not detail out who the passenger is. She instead keeps it simple by not differentiating between the characters in the book on the basis of their races (Sharma).
Another incident is depicted in the book where she shows up in front of her therapist house for treatment and the therapist hells at her to get away from her house. The words range from prose to poetic and from poetic to visual imagery in “The Citizen”. One powerful image which was included in the book was that of an incident where the black people were hanged to death. However, in the picture the black people were removed and only the white people who were watching the scene were highlighted. It was done to redirect our gazes to the excited expressions in the faces of white people who were turned on by the death of black people (Person).
Some of the words have a colloquial feel about them at first glance. But when we look deep into it, we may see that it is anything but colloquial. For example, the phrase “a fear she shares” may imply that the author is telling that the fear is shared between two people at first glance, quickly becomes clear that she actually means quite the opposite with the next line “You let her have it”. She means it is a fear which is not accepted by her (Chiasson). The book also uses a form of lyric poetry. Lyric poetry is form of poetry where details matter. The particulars about each and every incident narrated in the poem are important in a lyrical poem. Rankine shatters all those restrictions. She says that whereas a lyric poetry never uses public references, she dares to be different (Person). Her poem is unafraid like the minds of non-black people who view the black people with revulsion and unafraid to even show it. Her poem doesn’t analyze the circumstances of each and every death of a non-white like a lyric poem should. Instead, she equates all the deaths of the black people to one single entity, which are the actions of the white people as a whole against the Native Americans. Hence, this poem is aptly given the subtitle as ‘An American Lyric’ (Person).
This poem manages to reach somewhere inside us, since it is not just like any other poem based on fiction or imagination. It is like a collection of all the abuses and hurt which the black people are enduring for centuries and centuries. The entire poem is based on real life incidents. The personal feelings of all the people, from whom these incidents were gathered, manage to strike something deep in us. Hence, the poem can also be called as a personal narrative of all the black people in America.
Many of the poems were written in the second person form. In the interview to Sharma, Rankine says the main reason for using the second person form of addressing is because she wanted the audience to make their assumptions. She did not want to brand the individuals according to their race. She says if she had written “I”, in the place of “you”, then it would have detached the readers from feeling the effect of it. They would have thought that it is just some incident which is happening to some other person which is not in way connected to them. But by using “you”, she manages to involve the readers itself in the scenes in the poem (Sharma).
This poem is instrumental and written at a time when it is very much needed. We are a civilized group of people and for us to act in such a way, like classifying people, according to race and feeling disgusted about their presence, speaks volumes about our mentality. It is high time we changed and started respecting others too as humans. This poem makes us realize that we have been acting in a sick manner to those people and not realizing that not once had they retaliated against us. “Citizen: An American Lyric” is maybe the poem we have all been waiting for such a long time but its better late than never. The fact that it has been widely recognized and not shunned and thrown away makes us think that, we may be capable of change after all.
Works Cited
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. United States: Greywolf (US)/Penguin (UK), 2016. Print.
"Blackness as the Second Person." Interview by Meara Sharma. Guernica. 17 Nov. 2014. Web. 8 May 2016.
Chiasson, Dan. "Color Codes." The New Yorker. 27 Oct. 2014. Web. 08 May 2016.
Person, Nick Laird, http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/nick-laird/. "'A New Way of Writing About Race'" The New York Review of Books. 23 Apr. 2016. Web. 08 May 2016.
"Claudia Rankine." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Web. 08 May 2016.
