In the book Citizen, by Claudia Rankine the speaker displays the complicated relationship that both she and the world feel towards race. To fully illustrate to the reader what it feels like to be in this position, she consistently uses a second person point of view; and as she attempts to share her identity with the reader she also shares her ache- one that is constant and heavy. The speaker narrating this lyric feels a dichotomy living within her own body; this separation is a combination of pride in who she is, as well as feeling like she doesn’t exist at all, and that if she does- that her body is not her own. This disjunction within her own body, the place where someone is supposed to feel as safe as possible; is a direct response to the society surrounding her, begging the question to the reader; how is someone supposed to be a citizen if they are taught that they don’t even exist?
In the last chapter of this book the tone changes, instead of describing events of the speaker and others, this chapter speaks to the overall experience of Rankine specifically pertaining to identity- or in some cases the lack thereof. Rankine states “Even as your own weight insists / you are here, fighting off / the weight of nonexistence” (139). To have to fight just to remember and know that you are here, and that you are a person deserving of a place in the world, shows just how deeply dehumanizing it is to be any type of “other” in America, because as Rankine describes, you are not other, you are not an animal, you are nothing at all. Rankine goes on to say “The opening, between you and you, occupied / zone for an encounter, / given the histories of you and you- / and always, who is this you?” (140). The speaker is a very bold and dedicated person as the reader can note throughout the entirety of the book, yet even she, a person with a strong sense of self, falls ill to the notion of not having an identity. After constantly going against and surviving, the body becomes tired of consistent struggle, and it becomes hopeless. Rankine continually rises above, but how does that affect the body, “Some years there exists a wanting to escape- / you, floating above your certain ache- / still the ache coexists” (139). She has found that this idea of rising above your ache is meaningless, your ache is still there, it may be below you now, but it is still there all the same. If hate can find a way to continue to exist through changing circumstances, sadly and consequently so will the ache within the victims. The speaker is surviving within her difficult experiences, she repeatedly says “hey you” throughout this chapter, reminding herself that she is here and she is herself. The so-called citizenship that she lives within has had catastrophic effects on her identity, not leading to unity, but to extreme depersonalization.
Rankine uses images and illustrations frequently throughout this book to go above what she believes words can get across. On page 147 there is a colorful image of someone’s head and a portion of their upper body. However, features of this person have been replaced, and there are multiple different hands and arms grabbing at different parts of this person’s body. I believe that this picture is connected to something Rankine stated on the page before, “The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much to you-” (146). The hands are grabbing at a body and a person that isn’t theirs. They are mistaking “citizenship” for ownership and possession, only amplifying the ache that the speaker already feels. Rankine states this feeling of not owning your own body as an injury, she describes this injury earlier in the chapter, “You are not sick, you are injured- / you ache for the rest of your life. / How to care for the injured body. / the kind of body that can’t hold / the content it is living? / And where is the safest place when that place, / must be someplace other than in the body?” (143). The speaker’s injury is a body that is at its capacity. A body that is burned out from ache after ache. Throughout the entire book Rankine is describing events of microaggressions, police brutality, and even lack of aid for certain groups after natural disaster. Rankine is asking the reader how much a body is supposed to be able to take in one lifetime, and what someone is supposed to do when they don’t believe their body can take anymore.
The experience of citizenship in America is not a steady path, and is clearly catastrophic for many. The delusion of the American experience is apparent in this book. Rankine calls this book an American lyric. She is standing up and calling her painful experience and ache, the American way, plainly and simply. Rankine is just one of many coping with identity and loss in the shadow of America’s false and wrongfully portrayed positive image. Rankine ends the book showing a conversation, she says she wants to tell him something but “I don’t know how to end what doesn’t have an ending” (159). She is telling the reader and the world that the story isn’t over, and that even with all of her painful circumstances she continues to keep going, she is saying that she will continue to live even when she feels her body at capacity, when the world tells her she is nothing and that she doesn’t exist, she shows them exactly who she is.
Discussion Questions:
Citizen was originally published in 2014, since then do you think America has made any progress on the important issues that this book brings to light?
On the last page of the book the speaker changes the pronoun from you to I, what significance do you think that this change has?
Rankine also brings the conversation back to tennis in the ending, what do you think the significance of the distinction between a lesson versus a match is, and why do you think this was an important note to end on?
Work Cited:
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Graywolf Press, 2014.
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Great blog post Bella! I love how you comment on the tone change that the last chapter of this book takes. Throughout the story, to me, it always felt that Rankine was writing the novel to feel like each and every event was not only happening to the speaker but also to us. You commented on Rankine’s use of 2nd person POV and how you felt it helps her share her identity with us. I looked up the definition of 2nd person POV and found out that it is generally used to make the reader feel like the protagonist, or like they are one of the characters in the story they are reading. With that in mind, i think it is really interesting to reread over parts of the novel with that in mind, specifically the tennis section and the end of the novel. If Rankine is truly trying to make us a “protagonist” than it feels it goes beyond her just sharing her identity, but in fact trying to share the feeling her entire race, as well as anyone, as you put it, who is considered an “other” in America feels when they are made to believe they are less than nothing. To answer your first question, I think America has made great strides in addressing the issues shown in this novel, but the very fact that we still are reading it proves that these problems still have not been fully solved, but some progress is still much better than none at all. To answer your second question, I wanted to use Rankine’s quote on page 157, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background. I go into a building and it’s white. The receptionist asks me to take a seat. Chairs are white. The walls are white. The ceiling is fluorescent white. My shirt is not white. My skin builds into the chair, my hair into the ceiling, my teeth into the receptionist’s eyes, my spittle onto my file, white fingerprints all over the documents I hand over. Everything I do, every inch of existence, is colored.” (Rankine, “Citizen,” p. 157) To me this quote is the thesis of Rankine’s novel. She spends the entire novel expressing this exact feeling to the reader, but in the 2nd person specifically to make it feel more personal to us. But by switching the POV on the last page, to me signified her want to make us understand that despite the point of this novel to be spreading awareness that this happens to a vast majority of people, it still happens to HER, and that has hurt her for the entirety of her life, and she is expressing this to the reader to remind us that she is human and not immune to the insults and micro-aggressions presented throughout the novel.
Hi Bella, I really enjoyed your post, especially when you explained towards the end of the book the tone just completely changed from when it was in the beginning of the book. To answer your first question, since the book has been out in 2014, there has been more awareness for the issues brought up in the book more than progress. There are still the same issues in modern times, but there are a lot more people aware that it happens, and a lot more people want to change and/or do something about it. Rankine’s purpose of this book is to bring awareness that these awful things are happening to people who don’t deserve it. The speaker states multiple times in the chapter that, “James Craig Anderson is dead” (95). The speaker stating this sentence over and over again is to get people to realize that people are dying because of these certain issues.
Hi Bella! Great blog post! I love the connection between the image and the text. I am going to continue off that and share my interpretation of this image.
Clauida Rankine uses art in order to visually capture the emotion that is attached to racism. The image on page 147 is a side profile of a figure with different limbs attached to it. The background is white with darkness coming from the left side with red splatters on the top. These splatters connect to blood, which is normally connected to death and violence. Throughout the book, Rankine dedicates sections to victims of police violence. Rankine names a start of a section, “August 4, 2011/ In Memory of Mark Duggan” (144). Rankine also dedicates a page to victims of police brutality along with their names. This image reflects the way that these people died in the hands of the police. The different limbs along the image ties in with the violence associated with Hurricane Katrina that Rankine mentions. Rankine quotes lines said from CNN regarding Hurricane Katrina and states, “the missing limbs, he said, the bodies lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters, lying facedown, arms outstretched on parlor floors” (84). The different limbs left could symbolize the limbs found after Katrina hit. The image on page 147 ties in the different examples of violence that Rankine mentioned throughout the book in order to visually depict the disparities that black people have and continue to face.
Claudia**
Hey Bella, great post and I like your interpretation of the art on page 147. To answer your second discussion question, I believe her use of I was meant to show the reader that these scenarios are real. For the majority of the book, Rankine uses “you” to give us a more personal feeling and is meant to allow us to be in the shoes of someone on the receiving end of the microaggressions, etc. When Rankine says, “I had to go, I was expected on court, I grabbed my racket” (159) this allows us to see her in a similar light as Serena Williams which she talks about earlier in the book. It gives us as readers the perspective that these incidents are occurring to her and she is not much different than Serena Williams and faces similar racism in every day life.
Bella, you did a really good job interpreting the image on page 147! The first thing I noticed in this image was the multiple hands grabbing at the person pictured. These hands did not seem gentle to me, and looked like they were suffocating the person. Rankine writes, “Everything shaded everything darkened everything shadowed is the stripped is the struck – is the trace is the aftertaste” (146). This quote and the hands all over this person suggest that white people were taking away the brightness of a person of color. Their white “hands” are their words and actions dimming the light in people’s lives just because they are not white. This image on page 147 portrays a person who is suffering from the “aftertaste” of white privilege and discrimination. I understand why Rankine would say that you are not sick, you are just injured. White people darkened and shadowed the good life that all people of color deserve, suffocating them and leaving them in pain. Since this book was published, issues regarding how people of color are treated have definitely been addressed more, especially since 2020. There have been many movements and protests, but parts of America still seem to be stuck in a time where white people’s words and actions are still darkening black people’s lives. Change has happened for sure, but this image is still a representation of how some people of color are made to feel by white Americans.
Hi Bella, this is a wonderful blog post. You really sophisticatedly explained your analysis on the speaker and in your words, the disjunction within her own body. In response to your first question, I think we have made some progress in just spreading awareness on the issue of racism. I still see racism happen every day so I wouldn’t say society as a whole takes advantage of all of the many ways they can educate themselves on oppression and all the issues demonstrated in this book. Spreading awareness can only be useful if people actually acknowledge it and put it in action. I like this question because it connects the book to real life which is important because this book is very much relevant in our society today, in the past, and going forward in the future. I think this quote by the speaker is really important, ““I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background. I go into a building and it’s white. The receptionist asks me to take a seat. Chairs are white. The walls are white. The ceiling is fluorescent white. My shirt is not white. My skin builds into the chair, my hair into the ceiling, my teeth into the receptionist’s eyes, my spittle onto my file, white fingerprints all over the documents I hand over. Everything I do, every inch of existence, is colored.” (Rankine 157). This quote really portrays the feelings the speaker feels living as a woman of color. It says so little but means so much.
Hi Bella! I really enjoyed reading your blog posts. I like how in your third paragraph you talk about the images that Rankine uses throughout the book. The picture we see on page 147 stood out to me the most. I agree with you that the picture on page 147 is connected to when Rankine says “The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much to you- “(146).
I am going to be answering your first question. Since Citizen was originally published in 2014, I think that America today has made progress on some of the important issues that we see throughout this book. Today we have more awareness about issues in the world regarding people of color. Even though there is more awareness we still see that these issues are not fully solved. I believe that America today has gotten better and made progress when it comes to important issues that people of color are faced with but there is still more progress that can be made. Rankine says “Even as your own weight insists you are here, fighting off the weight of nonexistence.” (139). This quote shows us how people of color at the time felt like they were invisible. I do believe that people in America today can still relate to Rankine’s quote.
Hi Bella! Great blog post for this week. I was very intrigued reading your post and would love to answer your second question you raised of “on the last page of the book the speaker changes the pronouns from you to I.” The significance of this is huge because it shows how the experience goes from being focused on one person to now being focused on Rankine. “Ican hear the even breathing that creates passages to dreams. And yes, I want to interrupt to tell him her us you me I don’t know how to end what doesn’t have an ending.” (Rankine 159) The purpose in using him, her, us , you and me is so awareness can come to the reader and feel like the problem is happening to you. Rankine does this to give us a more personal feeling to the readings and stories and it helps us feel more connected to the stories she is telling. It gives us the readers a deeper insight to what experiences she has been through and still goes through and things that she still thinks about.
Hi Bella! I really enjoyed your blog posts and your interpretations on the images. I am going to be answering your first question. Citizen was originally published in 2014 and I think we as an American society have progressed so much. Unfortunately, we are always going to have issues and never be a perfect society because we always have a batch of bad eggs. However, I feel that we have come so far as a country over generations and as the years go by I think we get closer and closer to resolving these issues one at a time.
Hi Bella! Amazing job on your blog post, it was very well written and insightful. I would like to answer your second question, “On the last page of the book the speaker changes the pronoun from you to I, what significance do you think that this change has?” Throughout the whole book, one thing that I have continually noted as being powerful is the speaker’s use of “you.” Using the second person point of view evokes strong emotions from readers as they are better able to understand the microaggressions and hate crimes experienced by people of color and feel their pain. The shift from “you” to “I” on the last part is especially powerful because of its absence throughout the book. Rankine writes, “I want to interrupt to tell him her us you me I don’t know how to end what doesn’t have an ending” (159). This line is incredibly important and explains the shift in point of view- this is a book that describes a series of normalized flaws within the human race, but these problems cannot just end like a book does. There is no end to racism, unfortunately as of right now. The more people try to fight it, the more radicalized and aggressive the oppressors get. Rankine is asking the audience how do you end a book when the story isn’t over.
Hey Bella! Great stuff. You have a way with words. I really agree with what you said about how is someone supposed to be a citizen if they were taught they never existed? Very true up until the end of the novel. To answer your question of if America has made any progress on any of the issues shown in the book, I would have to agree and disagree. If you break it down individually, then yes maybe some people have changed their mindset on things, but I believe overall the issues displayed in the book have stayed the same if not gotten worse. Egregious acts of racism and discrimination still go on today. An example can be seen in the last chapter. “Trayvon Martin’a name sounds from the car radio a dozen times each half hour. You pull your love back into the seat because though no one seems to be chasing you, the justice system has other plans.” In modern day, they continue to have this fear built up and it affects them constantly. The passage also mentions Trayvon Martin’s name also being repeated which shows that they want the message to sink in. These issues are still alive today and thrive when hate and oppression is taught. Progress comes with how and what you teach your youth.
Page number on pdf (Rankine 122)
Really good post, I liked the way you focused on the image aspect of Rankine and how many layers it can go into meaning and how it relates to her overall message and how it represents her feelings. It’s like how you stated in your discussion question that Rankine relates a lot to tennis. I see this because tennis is something the subject can visually see and have reaction to, just like the images, and the images and reaction from observation can express the same meaning. It also relates to the lesson vs a match. In a lesson the reaction and expression one feels is supposed to evaluated and corrected if need be so that person can grow and move on. And the placement of this mention is to have the reader evaluate and introspect about and how it can relate to them if possible
Hey Bella, I really enjoyed reading your blog post as it gave me a lot to think about regarding the end of the book. I found that Rankine bringing the idea or theme of tennis full circle was very interesting. Within this book, I took the symbolism of tennis to be for Rankine’s experience and struggle within society. I don’t think just her experience but all black people. The way Rankine uses tennis with her last few lines really struck out to me. Rankine says “I could have followed her to worry my question but I had to go, I was expected on court,I grabbed my racket” (Rankine 159). The way I interpreted this line was that her racket is her sword. Her racket is a sword she is going use to fight injustice and unfairness within society. That line was very powerful to me and a great end to the book.
Since the publication of “Citizen” in 2014, I think America has stayed the same with progression on the important issues that this book brings to light. The main question the book sparked was “How is someone supposed to be a citizen if they are taught that they don’t even exist?” There have been several instances since 2014 where citizens are treated unfairly, with some cases resulting in death. I do believe, however, that we have made progress in trying to fix these issues. For example, there have been many protests for minority groups, especially people of color, who want to have the same treatment as their fellow citizens. Ot not be looked at like they are second class or that they do not belong.
Really good post, I liked the way you focused on the image aspect of Rankine and how many layers it can go into meaning and how it relates to her overall message and how it represents her feelings. It’s like how you stated in your discussion question that Rankine relates a lot to tennis. I see this because tennis is something the subject can visually see and have reaction to, just like the images, and the images and reaction from observation can express the same meaning. It also relates to the lesson vs a match quote, where it says, “Did you win? he asks. It wasn’t a match, I say. It was a lesson(Online Version has no page count)”. This can man that in a lesson, the reaction and expression one feels is supposed to evaluated and corrected, if need be, so that person can grow and move on. And the placement of this mention is to have the reader evaluate and introspect about and how it can relate to them if possible.