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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