Citizen: An American Lyric written by Claudia Rankine is a large work of poetry that explores the racism and injustice that many people of color have experienced in their lifetime through microaggression. Microaggression by Webster definition is “a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (such as a racial minority)” (Merriam-Webster). These microaggressions are much harder to detect than straight forward acts of racism but Rankine does and excellent job showing us different situations in which they have occurred. Rankine also strategically uses the word you in this chapter to better connect the reader to the story. This first untitled chapter gives us a detailed look into what we can expect throughout the rest of the book.
In the first untitled chapter of this book, we notice right away in the opening sentence Rankine’s usage of second person point of view as she continually uses the word “you” to refer to the reader. “When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows” (Rankine 5). This view now implies that us as the readers are a part of this story being told. Rankine has intelligently used this word in order to immerse the reader into the story and allow them to better picture and understand the details of what is happening in every situation. We as readers do this by putting ourselves into the shoes of whomever is experiencing these forms of discrimination. The usage of second person helps to open our eyes and break us out of the bubbles we live in as we see how other people in America are treated.
Throughout the chapter Rankine presents mini stories of which people, we don’t know who exactly as she has now made these stories ours, have experienced microaggression. We can see it at the start that we the readers are experiencing a situation in which a friend has called us by the name of her black housekeeper not even thinking twice about it, “You assumed you two were the only black people in her life” (Rankine 7). This expresses a form of microaggression as it is explained that this “friend” has unconsciously slipped up and when distracted has called the reader by some other person of colors name showing that she has not interacted with many people of color. And at the end of the chapter we are told that we are headed to visit a therapist that specializes in trauma counseling, “Get away from my house, what are you doing in my yard?… You have an appointment? She spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by, oh, yes, that’s right. I am sorry” (Rankine 18). This quote shows us that this therapist has assumed the reader was there to cause trouble when in fact they were there for a scheduled appointment. We can assume that because us the readers have only spoken to them over the phone, they assumed we were of a different race.
While reading this chapter we can at a glance see that all of these experiences seemed to be simple misunderstanding or unconscious mistakes but as we look at the chapter as a whole, we see the bigger picture of these interactions and understand that America is full of them. Rankine has helped us to understand that all of these “unconscious” or “unintentional” actions are really just conscious thoughts that live in the heads of many Americans. No one is innocent from these conscious biases or thoughts even if you are not the one experiencing or provoking as we repeatedly hear and talk about racial discrimination, whether it be a discussion in a class or something you have directly heard or witnessed yourself, these biases live in everyone.
Overall, this first chapter of Citizen: An American Lyric was extremely thought provoking and helped open my eyes and immerse us into the experiences the author Claudia Rankine’s has told of racial discrimination through microaggression as well as help us get a better insight as to what is to come in the future of this book.
Discussion Questions
- How did Rankine’s usage of the word “you” make you as a reader feel? How did you interpret her usage of the word? How did it affect the way you read the chapter?
- There were a couple of visual pictures presented in this chapter, one on page 6 and one on the final page 19. How did you interpret these images? How did they affect your reading of the chapter?
Citation
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Graywolf Press, 2014.
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