Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. For her book Citizen, Rankine
won both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award, the NAACP
Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (Citizen was
the first book ever to be named a finalist in both the poetry and
criticism categories); and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times
bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her numerous awards and
honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson
Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National
Endowment of the Arts. She has taught at Claremont, USC, and now, at
Yale. (adapted from her official website)
Reading:
Claudia Rankine, Citizen, 5-19
Study Questions:
1. Analyze the cover art of Citizen and the opening quotation.
2. Why do you think that Rankine chooses to write in second person? How does hearing “you” feel? How would it feel if the poems were written in first person? Third person?
