Citizen

Claudia Rankine's follow-up to her award-winning Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, a book about racial aggressions in daily life and in the media, was long-awaited. Citizen recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters with people of different races. Some of these encounters are slights--speech or actions that seem to be unintentional--and some are intentional offensives. Rankine argues that our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging and that our assumptions and expectations of citizenship are shaped by racism. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, or stay alive. This powerful testament is an eloquent testimony to the individual and collective effects of racism today.