Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

1446 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analyze and explain the role of a citizen

An Analysis of Citizen: An American Lyric It seems as if Claudia Rankine’s, Citizen: An American Lyric, is the artistic representation of the defining mood in this particular point in history as shown by widespread ideas and beliefs. When reading the book it is easy to think, “this is not really poetry”. Judges at the Book Critics Awards of 2014 declared that “It is not just poetry”. The sections of the book themselves are often categorized as essays, prose, stories, etc., in reviews by critics while the text as a whole is considered to be poetry. Ruth Kocher, an american poet, succinctly categorizes it as, “the poem… language that is perhaps poem or not poem”. Frankly, Citizen, is marooned in genre limbo. While it may seem inconsequential to define what exactly Citizen is, Kocher uses this indecision to express her concerns, “asking about the role of form and invention, within a discourse of the body, of identify, maybe even of the self and Other”. …show more content…

It is why when Rankine writes “you” you feel its abrupt force and the word “you” leaves behind a sense of unease. Addressability is why for a caucasian it is so awkward and complicated. Just by implying whom a caucasian is addressing he is subconsciously noting races that he is ready to shut out. This sort of language envisions a culture with the premise of certain peoples gone, at the same time, the races that are left out are also addressed. Prior to emphasizing the key points of Judith Butler’s philosophical lecture Rankine acknowledges a writer that believes that things are appropriate within certain context:
After a pause he adds that if someone said something, like about someone, and you were with your friends you would probably laugh, but if they said it out in public where black people could hear what was said, you might not, probably would not. Only then do you realize you are among "the others out in public" and not among "friends."

Show More
Related

  • Of Lyricism In Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric?

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever since the abolition of slavery in the United States, America has been an ever-evolving nation, but it cannot permanently erase the imprint prejudice has left. The realities of a ‘post-race world’ include the acts of everyday racism – those off-handed remarks, glances, implied judgments –which flourish in a place where explicit acts of discrimination have been outlawed. It has become a wound that leaves a scar on every generation, where all have felt what Rankine had showcased the words in Ligon’s art, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background” (53). Furthermore, her book works in constant concert with itself as seen in the setting of the drugstore as a man cuts in front of the speaker saying, “Oh my god, I didn’t see you./ You must be in a hurry, you offer./ No, no, no, I really didn’t see you” (77). Particularly troublesome to the reader, as the man’s initial alarm, containing an assumed sense of fear, immediately changing tone to overtly insistent over what should be an accidental mistake. It is in these moments that meaning becomes complex and attention is heightened, illuminating everyday prejudice. Thus, her use of the second person instigates curiosity, ultimately reaching its motive of self-reflections, when juxtaposed with the other pieces in

    Read More

  • Figurative Language And Diction In Queens, 1963, By Julia Alvarez

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    The female, adolescent speaker helps the audience realize the prejudice that is present in a “melting-pot” neighborhood in Queens during the year 1983. With the setting placed in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, the poem allows the audience to examine the experience of a young immigrant girl, and the inequality that is present during this time. Julia Alvarez in “Queens, 1963” employs poetic tools such as diction, figurative language, and irony to teach the reader that even though America is a place founded upon people who were strangers to the land, it is now home to immigrants to claim intolerance for other foreigners, despite the roots of America’s founding.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself and Alice Fulton’s You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain

    2924 Words  | 6 Pages

    When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.

    Read More

  • “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... that he was a grad student to familiarize them with his education levels; he shares his job position of being a writer, and at the same time openly reveals the emotions people feel with a black man's presences around them.

    Read More

  • Juxtaposition In The Fourth Of July, By Audre Lorde

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The most exciting attractions are between opposites that never meet.” -Andy Warhol. Opposites are exciting. When positive and negative spaces collide, new ways to look at art formulate. When left and right sides of the aisle combine in the chambers of Congress, revolutionary new laws are passed. When the dead meet the living, zombies rise from the grave, a subject so captivating, it has formed its own subgenre in all kinds of mediums. In writing, these opposites take a few forms. In African American author and poet, Audre Lorde’s narrative, The Fourth of July, a stunning display of juxtaposition helps the reader understand how Audre Lorde felt during her fateful trip to Washington D.C. and her argument that racism is a prevalent issue, despite

    Read More

  • Stokely Carmichael: Catalyst of the Black Power Movement

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    He then moves on to the topic of white people should be the ones defending why they oppressed and exploited us and not blacks defending why they are in this country and defending their position before they come in the country… after all whites are the ones who took us out of Africa. He says the reason for the oppression the blacks received was due to their skin color and no other factor.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Fourth Of July Analysis

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    Audre Lorde in her essay The “Fourth of July”(1982) asserts that freedom is not necessarily for all in the US. She develops her claim by utilizing situational irony, long flowing sentences, imagery. Lorde’s purpose is to show people the cracks in the ideals that the United States of America were founded on in order to get people to challenge those ideals themselves. She adopts a transforming tone to appeal to citizens who are not aware of racial issues that are relevant to them.

    Read More

  • Everyday Racism: A Study in Claudia Rankine's Citizen

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    Racism in itself is not difficult to recognize in its extreme forms. However, everyday racism is much more subtle and requires attention. It requires the recipient to be aware of the situation as to what is being said and how it is being said. One of these seemingly subtle incidents of everyday racism, Rankine uses the pronoun “you” by stating, “[b]ecause of your elite status from a year’s worth of travel, you have already settled into your window seat on United Airlines, when the girl and her mother arrive at your row. The girl, looking over at you, tells her mother, these are our seats, but this is not what I expected. The mother’s response is barely audible—I see, she says. I’ll sit in the middle,” (p.12). Here, Rankine uses the pronoun “you,” in hopes to put her reader in the shoes of the victim of this microaggression. If the reader is white, and is able to replace the victim with themselves, they would be able to see the incident as entirely unjust because they have never experienced being stereotyped. She doesn’t mention race but the minute a white reader recognizes that the victim is a black person (Rankine

    Read More

  • Racism In Sherman Alexie's 'Gentrification'

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Who was the most racist in that situation? Was it the white man who was too terrified to confront his black neighbors on their rudeness? Was it the black folks who abandoned their mattress on their curb? … Or was it all of us, black and white, passively revealing that, despite our surface friendliness, we didn’t really care about one another?” He never blames the black neighbors for their disregard of the mattress because their black, but sounds aware of the stereotyping and how he comes off addressing it. He also knows how much he stands out in the community as a minority, wondering what the cops would say to him, “ ‘Buddy,’ the cops would say. ‘You don’t fit the profile of the neighborhood.” Despite his pride in his actions of disposing of the mattress, the mistreatment by his black neighbors comes off as an unfortunate, but expected, consequence, “I knew the entire block would shun me. I felt pale and lost, like an American explorer in the

    Read More

  • Racism In Claudia Rankine's 'Citizens: An American Lyric'

    760 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Citizens: An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine the audience is placed in a world where racism strongly affects the daily American cultural and social life. In this world we are put as the eyewitnesses and victims, the bystanders and the participants of racial encounters that happen in our daily lives and in the media, yet we have managed to ignore them for the mere fact that we are accustomed to them. Some of these encounters may be accidental slips, things that we didn’t intend to say and that we didn’t mean yet they’ve managed to make it to the surface. On the other hand we have the encounters that are intentionally offensive, things said that are

    Read More

  • Blah

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...e still talking and laughing.” The crowd only pauses to criticize him when he mentions social equality. Even though the men are honoring him by allowing him to give his speech, he is reminded that they are belittling him and his race because he is being honored for obeying them rather than trying to further his race socially.

    Read More

  • Claudia Rankine's Citizen-An American Lyric

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book, “Citizen - An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine wrote about racial prejudice that the black body has been facing due to stereotyping. In the book, Rankine said the blacks are being judged by the color of their skin and not viewed as equal to their white counterpart. Rankine then backed up her claims by using descriptive imagery to create pictures in our mind as well as evoking feelings by citing various incidents to illustrate how black persons are still being discriminated against and wrongly perceived in the society we’re living in today. The purpose of Rankine’s use of her descriptive imagery is an attempt to capitalize on all of a reader 's senses and build them into something vivid and real in the reader 's mind that some

    Read More

  • Let America Be America Again

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    Poems are expression of the human soul, and even though, is not everyone’s cup of tea when the individual finds that special poem it moves their soul one with the poet. There are many poets in the world, but the one that grab my attention the most was no other than Langston Hughes. It would be impossible for me to cover all the poems he wrote, but the one that grab my attention the most is called “Let America Be America Again.” It first appeared in “1938 pamphlet by Hughes entitled A New Song. Which was published by a socialist organization named the International Worker Order” (MLM) and later change back to its original name. I have never felt such an energy coming out of a poem like this one which is the reason that I instantly felt in love with it.

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

More about Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

Open Document