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Citizen: An American Lyric

by Claudia Rankine
Citizen: An American Lyric

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  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9781555976903
ISBN10: 1555976905
Condition: Standard


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Awards

2014 National Book Critic's Circle Award for Poetry

From Powells.com

Black History Month

Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.


25 Books to Read Before You Die: 21st Century

These books create a stunning portrait of contemporary American life.


Black Lives Matter

Staff Pick

An open wound of a book, Citizen is 21st-century required reading. The subtle, almost invisible onslaught "citizens" face every day is split open for inspection. Rankine will hold your hand through it, but she will also hold it to the fire. No matter. It's necessary. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric is a momentous achievement in modern poetry, but also in American culture. To create this portrait of racism and microaggressions in 21st-century life, Rankine employs a prism of subjects, lenses, and perspectives in gorgeous language and innovative poetic style (the book includes visual imagery, prose pieces, and quotes from the media). Citizen is necessary, absorbing, and startling, and it is one of the most important books of poetry in the last decade. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com

Citizen is a personal, emotional, poetic account of being black in America. Some of it is told in snippets, as the experiences themselves are snippets — a comment at Starbucks, a shove on the subway. There are longer pieces, too, like her essay about Serena Williams, which blew my mind. The specificity and introspection of this book made for one of the most powerful reading experiences I've had. Recommended By Britt A., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.

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 persons 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. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race” society.

Review

"Once again Rankine inspires sympathy and outrage, but most of all a will to take a deep look at ourselves and our society." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Review

"A prism of personal perspectives illuminates [Rankine's] meditations on race....Powerful." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"Claudia Rankine's Citizen comes at you like doom. It's the best note in the wrong song that is America." Hilton Als

About the Author

Claudia Rankine is the author of four previous books, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. She currently is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Pomona College.

4.7 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.7 (3 comments)

`
mccaly28 , July 07, 2015 (view all comments by mccaly28)
This book is beautiful and moving. The storytelling within the poetry captures feelings and thoughts that can be so difficult to articulate and does so in such a seamless and accessible way. It's a short and meaningful read.

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S Holladay , March 21, 2015 (view all comments by S Holladay)
I read this book in one sitting. Not because it was easy to read, but because it was that compelling. Ms. Rankine's book is timely, showing many covert and overt racist experiences she as a Black woman experiences on a daily basis. Much of the book describes her daily experiences, but she uses "you" instead of "I" to illustrate them, causing the reader to be in her shoes, at least momentarily. If you like this book, read another one by her, "Don't Let Me Be Lonely". I'm happy she's getting the positive praise she deserves.

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`
DS Nemchoff , October 22, 2014 (view all comments by DS Nemchoff)
Citizen is a formally daring work of essay, poetry and visual art that is both powerful and deeply unsettling. Citizen pulls you in and pushes you away, you find solidarity here, and you find shame. It makes you righteously angry and it implicates you. It is dangerously alive. Citizen is a journey. Take it many times. It will reshape you and replace you. It will take you to different places or will take a now different you to the same places differently. Short-listed for(and hopefully soon to win) the National Book Award, Claudia Rankine's Citizen is essential reading and a perfect pairing with her previous collection Don't Let Me Be Lonely.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781555976903
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
10/07/2014
Publisher:
GRAYWOLF PRESS
Pages:
169
Height:
8.00
Width:
5.50
Thickness:
.50
UPC Code:
9781555976903
Author:
Claudia Rankine
Subject:
Anthologies-Essays

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$13.95
List Price:$20.00
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1Cedar Hills

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