Citizen is a biographical excerpt of events that occurred in Claudia Rankine’s life. Claudia, a woman of color living in America, endured racism of different magnitudes while trying to attain the American dream; a decent education, respectable career and an exceptional home. The compilation of her experiences illustrates how during encounters with friends, colleagues, strangers and members of her own family, race can take a center stage. During the course of the many encounters, Claudia does not defend herself. She coped with the situation the best she could at the time; by not saying anything at all. Towards the end however, she was able to gain her voice and cried out against the injustice of it all. In her writing, Claudia displayed how deep-rooted her pain was. Claudia uses metaphors to illustrate the affliction she endured and how baffled she felt at the apparent racism and the blatant disrespect for her humanity. …show more content…
“Certain moments send adrenaline to the heart … Like thunder they drown you in sound, no, like lightning they strike you in across the larynx.” Describing her lost for words as her white friend, in addressing her, called her by the name of her black maid; the only other black person the friend knew. “Did I hear what I think I heard?” Still, Claudia says nothing. She does not object to the inaccuracy of being called the wrong name, or the connotation the black maids name implies. The friend could have readily called her by the name of a classmate, or the name of another friend. Except, all of her other friends are white. The friend apparently does not see her individuality. Most importantly, she sees the color of her
In Tim Seibles' poem, The Case, he reviews the problematic situations of how white people are naturally born with an unfair privilege. Throughout the poem, he goes into detail about how colored people become uncomfortable when they realize that their skin color is different. Not only does it affect them in an everyday aspect, but also in emotional ways as well. He starts off with stating how white people are beautiful and continues on with how people enjoy their presence. Then he transitions into how people of color actually feel when they encounter a white person. After, he ends with the accusation of the white people in today's world that are still racist and hateful towards people of color.
In Claudia Rankine’s 2014 book, Citizen: An American Lyric, she promotes the idea of a “post-race” society, captivating the reader into a position of self-reflection. The lyricism of her prose explores the definition of the titular ‘citizen’, thereby encouraging and promoting change. Her incentive is not to change the minds of readers, only broaden scope of the world they already have, honing on the undeniable reality of the world. She invites her reader to emotions of grief and outrage, which leads the reader toward self-awareness. Citizen seeks to inspire her audience through the presentation of identity politics in the modern-day. It is a work premised on self-awareness to unconscious thoughts and actions. Her use of the second person,
To depict the unfair daily lives of African Americans, Martin Luther King begins with an allegory, a boy and a girl representing faultless African Americans in the nation. The readers are able to visualize and smell the vermin-infested apartment houses and the “stench” of garbage in a place where African American kids live. The stench and vermin infested houses metaphorically portray our nation being infested with social injustice. Even the roofs of the houses are “patched-up” of bandages that were placed repeatedly in order to cover a damage. However, these roofs are not fixed completely since America has been pushing racial equality aside as seen in the Plessy v. Ferguson court case in which it ruled that African Americans were “separate but equal”. Ever since the introduction of African Americans into the nation for slavery purposes, the society
Likewise, Orr struggles through a similar problem in Alabama between the white and African American people. He is a white man from up north, which is odd considering he is an activist for the Civil Rights Movement. He left himself vulnerable to this abuse because he relied on citizenship to guide his decisions. Manners and citizenship work simultaneously in building a civil society, nonetheless, it can raise conundrums within a person’s life.
The world today can sometimes be a hard place to live, or at least live in comfort. Whether it be through the fault of bullies, or an even more wide spread problem such as racism, it is nearly impossible to live a day in the world today and feel like it was only full of happiness and good times. Due to this widespread problem of racism, often times we tend to see authors go with the grain and ignore it, continuously writing as if nothing bad happens in the world. Fortunately, Claudia Rankine, is not one of these authors. Rankine manages to paint a vivid picture of a life of hardships in her lyric Citizen: An American Lyric. In this lyric Claudia Rankine shows that she truly has a very interesting and not commonly used approach to some literary
Rankine often refers back to the themes of taking away individuality, and the idea that black skin is a threat or insult. She describes the conversation she had with a classmate on their way to school, where she was asked to lean to the right so the classmate would be able to copy off of Rankine. Although this happened quite some time ago, and Rankine cannot remember the minor details, such as the girl’s name, what was said to her has been remembered. “She tells you you smell good and have features more like a white person. ”2 Rankine assumes that the girl says this to make herself feel better about cheating from a black person, as if someone who is black is beneath her.
She leaves behind her family in order to pursue what she believes is the greater good. She leaves behind a family of nine, living in extreme poverty, to live with her biological father—who runs out on her at a young age to satisfy his need to feel big and important, simply based on anxieties about the hardships around him. Moody comes from a highly difficult and stressful situation, but she stands as the only hope for her starving family and leaves them behind for a life of scholarship and opportunity. This memoir leaves the reader with a sense of guilt for Moody’s decisions, and one may even argue that these decisions happened in vain, as the movement never made a massive impact on race relations. Unfortunately for Moody, she would continue to witness atrocious hate crimes up until the year of her
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen is a story about stories, about the repetition of American racism and the structures of inequality that are upheld in grand, sweeping gestures but also in smaller, less noticeable ways that build and accumulate. Within this exploration and exasperation exists a central question: what does it mean to be a citizen?
In the short story “The Fourth of July,” Audre Lorde explains her tragic childhood trip to Washington when the society and America treats black people with discrimination. Lorde repeatedly affirms that racism should not exist and contends that people should try to fix this issue, unlike her parents. Throughout the short story, Lorde contrasts from her parents because she believes that injustice to black people should be conceded, while her parents constantly try to obscure racism. In her writing, Lorde evokes the reader about how her parents persistently try to hide racism when she reveals that her family seat in a “corded and crisp and pinaforced” way (242). Lorde estabslishes how her family tries to be perfect and balanced through this parallelism
“Everything that Rises Must Converge”, by Flannery O’Conner, deals with contentious issues of racism and the questionable validity of what is racism after the civil rights movement. In the portrayal of these sensitive issues, O’Conner utilizes a unique narrative point of view in order to maneuver the reader’s response to characters, situations, conflicts, and issues. Through these different levels of narration, from the third person narration of Julian’s point of view, and the limited periods of other first person narrations from the minor characters, readers are influenced and manipulated to question their own attitudes towards the racial issues presented. O’Conner uses third person limited by explaining the description of the events that were occurring on the bus: “Julian rose, crossed the aisle, and said down in the place of the women with the canvas sandals”. ”Do
In Audre Lorde’s bildungsroman essay “The Fourth of July” (1997), she recalls her family’s trip to the nation’s capital that represented the end of her childhood ignorance by being exposed to the harsh reality of racialization in the mid 1900s. Lorde explains that her parents are to blame for shaping her skewed perception of America by shamefully dismissing frequent acts of racism. Utilizing copious examples of her family being negatively affected by racism, Lorde expresses her anger towards her parents’ refusal to address the blatant, humiliating acts of discrimination in order to emphasize her confusion as to why objecting to racism is a taboo. Lorde’s use of a transformational tone of excitement to anger, and dramatic irony allows those
The main character is completely alienated from the world around him. He is a black man living in a white world, a man who was born in the South but is now living in the North, and his only form of companionship is his dying wife, Laura, whom he is desperate to save. He is unable to work since he has no birth certificate—no official identity. Without a job he is unable to make his mark in the world, and if his wife dies, not only would he lose his lover but also any evidence that he ever existed. As the story progresses he loses his own awareness of his identity—“somehow he had forgotten his own name.” The author emphasizes the main character’s mistreatment in life by white society during a vivid recollection of an event in his childhood when he was chased by a train filled with “white people laughing as he ran screaming,” a hallucination which was triggered by his exploration of the “old scars” on his body. This connection between alienation and oppression highlight Ellison’s central idea.
...ites a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still openly practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows how relevant discrimination was in everyday life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use the selected literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps exemplify the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.
It is not until Celie is an adult that she finally feels content with her life and understands her capacity to be a completely autonomous woman. The concept of racial and gender equality has expanded greatly throughout the twentieth century, both in society and in literature. These changes influence Walker's writing, allowing her to create a novel that chronicles the development of a discriminated black woman. Her main character, Celie, progresses from oppression to self-sufficiency, thereby symbolizing the racial and gender advancements our country has achieved.
Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican woman born in 1963 raised in Kingston and New York City. Her early life traces back to when she studied at Williams College, where she then decided to pursue an MFA at Columbia University. Since completing her education, she has published collections of poetry, anthologies, and has received many awards and fellowships. She is currently the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College as well as a chancellor in the Academy of American Poets. To say that Rankine has reached a bounty of success in her life is an understatement. In Citizen: An American Lyric she expresses the social struggles