Citizen ★★★★☆

Citizen: An American Lyric (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★☆

Citizen: An American Lyric is a collection of poetry and essays by Claudia Rankine.

I purchased this book a while back, as it is a multi-media book where the experience of reading it is equal to the words on the page.

Rankine addresses a lot in this book from Serena Wiliams to Hurricane Katrina to Trevon Martin. She poetically and politically describes the current state of racism in America. Microagressions and the Black experience are also a big part of key chapters detailing stop and frisk situations with Black men and the police or how a Black woman feels about an open seat on the bus. The work encourages me, as a white individual, to focus my sight on what I’m missing so I can try to play a more active role in addressing racism in our country.

I struggle with prose poetry and reading Rankine is a way that I try to grow in that genre. A note on the design - the book is made up of not only Rakine’s words but also artworks from artists, which are seamlessly incorporated into each section, at times even between the lines of the text.

I have also read Just Us and The White Card by this author and equally recommend them.

If you liked Citizen, I also recommend Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, and The Ferguson Report by The U.S. Department of Justice.

#happyreading

Ms.Bjork