Works Cited Page 

Djawoto, Olivia. “Poetry in the Post-Truth Era: Formal Structures in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.” Forum (Edinburgh) 25.25 (2017): n. pag. Print.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International, 1995. Print.

Frisina, Kyle. “From Performativity to Performance: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and Autotheory.” The Arizona quarterly 76.1 (2020): 141–166. Web.

Hartung, Burke. “Taking Perspective: Personal Pronouns Affect Experiential Aspects of Literary Reading.” PloS one 11.5 (2016): e0154732–e0154732. Web.

Larkin, Lesley. “Close Reading “You”: Ralph Ellison.” In Race and the Literary Encounter: Black Literature from James Weldon Johnson to Percival Everett, 92-123. Indiana University Press, 2015. Accessed November 10, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17t75c3.7.

Rankine, Claudia, 1963- author. Citizen : An American Lyric. Minneapolis, Minnesota :Graywolf Press, 2014.

Simecek, Karen. “Cultivating Intimacy: The Use of the Second Person in Lyric Poetry.” Philosophy and literature 43.2 (2019): 501–518. Web.

When looking for these articles I proceeded to use the Hunter College Library Database. I used JStor, Onesearch, and Gale Literature at first to look for research articles. I then proceeded to use terms such as “third person, pronouns, you, perspective, impact, and literature” in order to narrow down searches for my research paper. This helped out as at first I was not getting many articles relevant to my topic but as I made my terms more to the point, I found more sources. I also ensured that the articles were  “peer-reviewed” so that they were reliable sources. I also read it to make sure it would support my argument and also see if it would expand my own knowledge so that I could incorporate it into my paper. The research did take me a while to find as Rankine wrote Citizen in 2014 but narrowing it down definitely helped finding articles that were relevant to my topic.

(I apologize in advance for my lack of quotables, I can’t find my book)

In Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Rankine speaks on a wide array of topics that encompass the ever extending range of issues, microaggressions, and scenarios that black Americans have faced in the past, deal with in the present, and will continue to have to withstand going into the fearful, unforeseeable future. The title itself, Citizen, can be interpreted in many ways, but I believe the best possible interpretation would be that black Americans often times find themselves outside of the boundaries of this word regardless of the legality in which its bounds encompass. To be a citizen is defined by Merriam-Webster as an inhabitant of a city especially one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman. One of these vast inalienable rights is the right to life, one which is so often desecrated by the ignorant, naïve white Americans who still decide to perpetuate the racial injustices and insecurities first started off by their great great great great you get the damn point grandparents. By removing this right to life, you remove a person’s ability to feel like they area citizen, to feel like they are an equal in a community of what is meant to be their peers due to proximity, boundary, and state lines. This makes someone feel as though they are an “other”, a second-class citizen and this feeling extends far and wide, beyond the boundaries set legally as the pain of a race effects the entirety of the race, not just the person in question.

As you read through Citizen in its most general capacities, you almost have a flashback, déjà vu moment as earlier in the semester we read Fanon’s The Fact of Blackness. This relates so heavily to Rankine that it is almost as if his spirit had possessed her intellect and guided her hands as she wrote her book-length poem. Fanon writes, “the black man among his own in the twentieth century does not know what moment his inferiority comes into being through the other”, relating back to this idea of being seen as less than by white people except the obvious answer is at birth. Black people are seen as inferior from birth, unlucky even, for being “cursed” with a darker skin complexion as though the choice were like choosing between the red and blue pill from the Matrix. Like Rankine reflecting on her own received microaggressions, Fanon speaks on his encounter with a white child whose fear of him stems not from birth like blackness does, but rather from being taught this archaic ideal of hating one just for the color of their own skin. Recalling the child’s fear of him without him having done anything to be fearful of, it shows his reduction into himself.

Where the disagree happens between Fanon and Rankine is on the idea of becoming “better than”. While Fanon seeks to remedy the situation by becoming a doctor or some other “respectable” field, Rankine speaks on the lack of knowledge from the perpetrators on cases such as Trayvon Martin in which even if the boy had been a renowned brain surgeon, he was only seen as a black male with a hoodie on at the moment of his death because George Zimmerman couldn’t “police his imagination”. This imagination is one in which all black people are a problem and the only solution is systematic, slow genocide to cleanse the America of them. Martin was a citizen, but wasn’t treated as such.

The novel ends with a particular painting that I’ve studied myself by noting the historical context, but by staring at it until the yellows became blacks, the blues became blacks, and the black got even blacker. Fanon seeing this painting would have no doubt understood its placement as he had felt and experienced it all too well: black Americans are not seen as citizens. They are seen as disposables long after the times in which being cast into the sea was the norm just as Fanon is seen as just “a dirty n***er” despite being both a physician and psychiatrist. Serena Williams showing emotion is seen as just another angry black women with the ability to contain herself rather than a fierce competitor who has the right to be upset with negative outcomes as she has dominated her sport for over a decade. Through all these means, Fanon may have inspired Rankine and continues to guide her pen up until the current times.

We’re going to keep things simple today. No video lecture, nothing due on this blog. Instead, you will read the interview of Claudia Rankine by literary critic/theorist Lauren Berlant:

https://via.hypothes.is/https://bombmagazine.org/articles/claudia-rankine/

The link takes you to the article with hypothes.is enabled. Make sure to select our ENGL252 group and annotate away: you’ll notice that I’ve posed a bunch of questions to guide you, but of course feel free as always to highlight your own passages and make your own notes, or to comment on other’s comments.

And keep reading: on Monday we’ll discuss the entire text. Also remember that your “simple,” unannotated bibliography for the final project is due on the blog for Monday.

How does Morrison’s use of animal imagery ironically reflect the “unnatural” theme of her novel?

In “Citizen: An American lyric” by Claudia Rankine, the usage of grammatical “you” is more frequent than “I” and other pronouns “he/she/they”. Rankine’s utilization of “you” is specific, the intent is to create an environment similar to one that aims to teach, make personal a situation the audience may not be familiar with. In this case, Rankine guides the audience to and through a series of experiences that taste similarly of bitterness and microaggressions that come with racism. The audience is told about their experiences; in one situation you are told about being chased away from your therapy appointment on trauma counselling, and then another where a passenger refuses to sit alongside you on a plane, and another where your neighbor calls the police to investigate a suspicious person in front of your house who turns out to be your friend. This is the lived reality for Rankine and for any others, and she wants to share this to tell you: this is what I go through, but this is only a small fraction of all my experiences with racism, with white comfort and guilt and their need for consolation, the witnessing of microaggressions, of solidarity, and so on so forth.

While Rankine’s use of “you” is stronger throughout the entirety of part I, in the anecdote recounting how a woman’s son is knocked over in the subway and the perpetrator leaves without an apology, the the focus seems to be on the person who tells the story, the “her”, and also the heartwarming feeling it brings up in the “you”. The audience is there alongside the “you” as it has been all along, but this situation feels different from others in that it not only wants to teach “you” the audience to look at themselves in this situation, it also wants to comment on a little bit of hope and love can look like, what solidarity looks like in the form of numbers and support as the woman takes a stand for her child and asks the stranger to apologize to him and men stand behind the woman like bodyguards, like “newly founds uncles and brothers” (Rankine 23). In this story, the “her” is telling the story rather than it coming from and beginning with “you” like it has in the previous anecdotes. This experience does not come from “you” but the situation is familiar and the lady’s purpose is too: both she and you want the boy to be seen and helped and apologized to. Both of you acknowledge that they have probably never seen that boy until now, have never seen any of you because you are not a “reflection” (Rankine 23) of them.

Rankine utilizes “you” to give perspective, to bring the audience into a situation in order to make them realize an important and intimate experience alongside her. Rankine chooses to share these experiences so as to get an important message across about her and many others’ lived reality marked with microaggressions, hatred, hope, bitterness, and so much more. By using “you” the audience is placed directly inside the story and they’re made to be connected to the events and experiences and thus cannot ignore the reality of their current situation.