' is an especially vital book for this moment in time. 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. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. 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. Ī provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.Ĭlaudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Slate, Time Out New York, Vulture, Refinery 29, and many more. The New Yorker, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, NPR. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award * * Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A.

* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *

Citizen a lyric