I only picked up Citizen by Claudia Rankine in my third week at CSSSA. Both Meg and Rosa had both recommended me this book, one as a poetry collection and one as a long braided essay, but I was grateful enough to find this gem inside the CalArts library.
The book was, indeed, both a essay and a poetry collection. Written in the view of a speaker (and presumably Claudia Rankine), there are many shifts within the story. Beginning with everyday moments of racism, the Serena William's anger, and more threads intertwine to make the story. Within the pages of text dispersed in empty white paper, there are images. One image is printed block letters of the phrase by Nora Zeale Hurston "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background."
The book was one which took me a few times to read, and I do wish I had a copy to read again. But I don't. Rankine was revealing a voice that many people had and expressed, but it felt like a web that stretched over all the parts. It feels relatively disconnected, as it is a braided essay, but it did really signify what it meant to be an American, especially a Black woman in this narrative. But it is not purely paragraphical. Much of the language there is poetic of the hurt and the invisibility that the speaker faces, many which ended in my camera role.
I would say Claudia Rankine was honest because the voice that she said was heard and the voices of many unheard are revealed. I would recommend this book to anybody, especially someone who enjoys essays and poems.
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