Nurhayati, Ari. “Intersecting Oppression of Gender and Race in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and God Help The Child.” Litera (Yogyakarta) 18.3 (2019): 382–400. Web.

-This article discusses white supremacy in America and its place and effect in the novel. It goes on to specifically discuss how women in America especially suffer from racism and their methods of coping and surviving through this hostility and negativity. All of this is related back to women and the oppression they face within the novel.

Koch, E. “Hollywood’s Terror Industry: Idealized Beauty and The Bluest Eye.” Sanglap : journal of literary and cultural inquiry 1.1 (2014): 147–. Print.

-Koch discusses and breaks down the cultural ideal of beauty that existed in a 1940s era America and how Toni Morrison’s novel accurately displays the suffering that many Americans, especially African Americans, had to go through so that they could conform to these ideals.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye; a Novel. [1st ed.]. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. Print.

-This is the main novel that the essay will stem from. This novel contains the main plot and the other articles that are used all discuss the situations that take place within the main story.

Muhi, Ridha. “The Quest for an Ideal Beauty in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” مجلة كلية التربية للبنات, vol. 21, no. 2, College of Education for Women, Feb. 2019.

-This text identifies how a white complexion being the standard of beauty at the time in America has affected the African American youth. The text also goes on to further dive into how this standard of beauty can destroy a person’s self-esteem and the love they have for themselves. It can also blind them from recognizing their own natural beauty.

Scott, Lynn. “Beauty, Virtue and Disciplinary Power: A Foucaldian Reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Midwestern miscellany 24 (1996): 9–. Print.

-The author identifies how Toni Morrison’s work is an example of a Foucauldian theory. They further explain this by discussing the power contained by European Americans and their control and influence on society. This power can also negatively impact other demographics such as African Americans.

I continued my search for reliable information amongst the vast amount of data present on the internet. I used the Hunter College Library website, JSTOR, and Researchgate to look for more articles. Although I had found some articles that could have possibly fit into my bibliography, I was already comfortable with the current selection I had and I personally found them to be more relevant to my essay and argument after picking through them. They seem to be satisfactory in the information they provide, but my incessant research may mean I can possibly come across better or more relevant information in the future, in which case may mean an updated bibliography.

Saunders, James. “Why Losing a Tooth Matters: Shirley Jackson’s The Tooth and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” The Midwest quarterly (Pittsburg) 53.2 (2012): 193–. Print.-This article compares Shirley Jackson’s novel and Toni Morrison’s novel. They specifically discuss beauty and how our body plays a major role in portraying our “outer beauty.” They also discuss Pauline Breedlove and how the loss of her tooth has affected her self esteem and personal outlook.

        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.

• Olivia Djawoto discusses the impact that the poetry in “Citizen: An American Lyric “ has on the overall narrative piece itself as well as the impact on the reader. This argument is fully developed throughout the piece as the writer speaks about how the book speaks about the importance of “truth” about the racial inequities in America. She dives into how the title holds an underlying meaning in the message that Rankine is spreading, that “citizenship” is not given to everyone. This is one of the many things discussed in the article and we see more topics discussed such as how Rankine’s use of the second person affects the reader’s perspective on the injustices in the book. Overall the article makes the reader think about the “truth” of the “post-racial” world we live in today. 

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

• This is the literary piece that will be used to compare/contrast. The paper centers around this piece.

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

• Kyle C. Frisina continues the conversation of how the use of “you” affects the piece as well as the reader. In this case of the arguments used here is how the usage of “you” comforts the reader and allows the reader to share their own microaggressions by forming a connection to the narrator in the book. The article focuses on how these connections allow for a “performance” from both the reader and the narrator.

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

• Burke Hartung explains the usage of pronouns in literature and how they change the literature in which they are being used. This article explains and discusses the first, second, and third-person perspectives in literature and how they affect the reader. He takes a psychological approach as we see how these different usages can provide different outcomes for individuals who are reading the literature.

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.

• Lesley Larkin in this chapter of the textbook discusses the use of the second person throughout the novel. She analyzes and investigates its impact on the novel and how this different perspective can perhaps change the meaning of the novel or add a new meaning to it.

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

• This is the literary piece that will be used to compare/contrast. The paper centers around this piece.

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

• Karen Simecek focuses entirely on the use of the second person in “Citizen: An American Lyric” and how this use encaptures the reader. She also discusses how the use of the second person makes an “intimate” connection with the reader and the narrator of the work. This concept is further discussed throughout the article as examples are given to further explain it.

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” 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 helped to find articles that were relevant to my topic.

Claudia Rankine and John Lucas’ video and accompanying text describing Zinedine Zidane’s infamous World Cup headbutt explores the ways in which it may be called a “situation.” The most obvious is in the literal situation in which Zidane was placed, one where he was forced to choose between keeping up a facade of calm in the face of racist verbal abuse or to respond, which he chose to do, physically. This is in line with Rankine’s explorations of media misrepresentation of famous Black figures but, somewhat surprisingly, it also evokes the repeating theme of a Black man forced into a violent confrontation and being demonized for his choices after the fact. The immediacy of Zidane’s dilemma led to his arguably rash decision, his headbutt being borne entirely of the situation. This, however, was not reflected in greater reporting on the incident. Another meaning of “situation” appears here, especially when one looks at the still frames in Citizen from which the video is created. The way in which the white-clad Zidane is situated differently to the blue-clad racist opponent in each frame tells a non-verbal story in of itself, but Rankine’s addition of various quotes adds layers of context. The evolution of Zidane’s quotes alone as the frames progress- from discussing his national pride to asking rhetorically if one thought he “wanted to do that,” to his description of the racist phrases having “’touched the deepest part of [him]’”- shed light on how the two men were societally situated to each other, and in which direction the power flowed (Zidane qtd. in Rankine, 102, 103). This greater societal situating is backed up by Rankine’s choices of Fanon and Baldwin to provide the bulk of the other quotes accompanying the images. With the greater context, Zidane is no longer a sports trivia fact, but a victim of hate with an understandable response.

Rankine’s choice to create a film-based version of her “situation,” as well as to place it in her book, demands that closer attention be paid to what could be thought of as one small passage in a large text. The film version of Rankine’s analysis of Zidane is almost painfully slow, his body moving alongside his racist opponent in slow, sudden jerks that feel almost painful with the accompanying words. What can be read somewhat quickly in text form, the film strip of images on the page easy to stop and take in, is turned into a challenging experience. The text’s repetition of BLACK-BLANC-BEUR, between long lines, add an almost official atmosphere to the text. The video, by contrast, is accompanied by an unsettling droning noise. Another highly significant difference is the stripping away of quote attribution in the video. What is, in Citizen, a textual analysis that almost rises to an annotation of a misunderstood moment, becomes a collage of incisive and inherently personal statements that may all be either attributed to or discussing the blurry Zidane. With this forced frame-by-frame perspective and the sound choices that direct one’s attention and emotion, Rankine makes more prominent than at any point in the text the theme of experiencing. This is as close as we can come to being inside Zidane’s head in that pivotal moment, with Rankine’s curated words helping us to more fully empathize and understand.

In her book “Citizen the American Lyric” Rankine uses another form of visual art to give the reader a closer look at some situations that she chose to share with her audience. It is called a situation because it represents the plight of disadvantaged people. Those events are related to racism whether because of religion, poverty, or race. In each situation, Rankine becomes one of the victims and speaks out to make the reader feel the pain of those victims. She also uses “he/she” to reflect on everyone’s tough experience.
In “situation 3” the video was about Hurricane Katrina, Aug 29, 2005. In this situation, Rankine was reading her text along with the video that shows black people drowning because of Hurricane Katrina, both the text and the moving images go hand in hand. In the text, she was describing the struggles that blacks were going through and how they were waiting for help from national relief organizations, but no help was provided. At first, when I read the text, I focused on reading the words and try to understand and picture the situation. After I saw the video that was accompanied by the text, I felt like I was one of the victims, crying for help and trying my best to survive. I felt very sad and angry about what happened at that moment because of racial prejudice. I felt angry because black lives were expendable in this situation. Also, hearing the author’s voice along with the video made me feel like I am having a private conversation with one of my friends and I think that is one of Rankine’s goals. It gave the textual content more value and it grabs the reader’s attention. For me Supplementing printed text this way shows that Rankine is aware of the importance of including real stories to convey her point of view about social problems. She is also aware that some words can be forgotten but images cannot. For example, in this situation, she provided the audience with actual statements to reflect on the racism of all its kinds. She showed how blacks felt helpless in a country that is rich but can provide help only to privileged people.
The major themes in this situation are poverty and racial segregation. It shows the situation of the members of a black neighborhood who were “standing where the deep waters of everything backed up, one said, climbing over bodies, one said, stranded on the roof, one said, trapped in the building, and in the difficulty, nobody coming and still someone saying, who could see it coming, the difficulty of that” (Rankine, 83). Waiting and waiting but no one showed up to provide help. Sadly, but not surprisingly, some republican officials were praying for such a catastrophe like this to take place. I still remember when the Republican representative Richard H. Baker said, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did”. This situation strongly relates to the rest of Rankine’s text. It emphasizes the idea that American citizens are treated differently based on their skin color or social class. Including those situations in her book proves that segregation still exist although slavery had ended a long time ago, not only in the US but all over the world.

    I remember when I was a child, I always loved to read books with pictures, and the reason was very simple because they made me feel happy. But as an adult, looking at images while reading might clarify the content of the text or confuse me more. Many writers choose to use images or videos because they see that it is a great way to invite the audience to read their work. Scientifically it was proven that we humans are more attracted by visual arts. The first image that grabbed my attention is the one on the cover of the book. When I saw this image, I remembered Zora Hurston’s words when she said, “I feel more colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background”. In this image, we see a picture of a black hood and the background is white. Later, we saw those words written in bold black ink because she wants everyone to see and feel the deep meaning of these words. These words destroyed and still destroying the lives of blacks. I think that Rankine was inspired by Zora when she chose the image of the cover of her book. The combination of black and white in the image strongly illustrates the title of the book. Since the hood is in black and also a symbol related to African Americans, I think that Rankine wants to tell whites that “hey, yes we are blacks and we are American citizens as you” have the same rights and obligations. In other words, a citizen is an “American lyric” not a “white lyric”. The same picture might be interpreted conversely by others. Some might think that Rankine used this picture to scare whites since the hood is a symbol of protest.

The second image that I would like to talk about is the one that represents a beautiful peaceful suburban neighborhood that has a sign of Jim Crowe road. We see how the neighborhood is clean, with well-cut grass, and big white houses for white residents. Jim Crowe represents an era when African Americans were executed, and segregation laws were released. This picture illustrates the situation when the character felt invisible by her teacher. The teacher did not care that Mary Catherine was copying her answers and she was wondering what would happen if she was copying Mary Catherine. This picture is the first one in her book, I think there are two reasons for that. The first reason is that she wants to hook the reader’s attention. The second one is to give the reader a hint about the theme of her book. She wants to convey to the audience that racism still exists although slavery had ended a long time ago. This relates to the situation because the character claimed that she was invisible and having this sign of Jim Crowe sign in the neighborhood is like telling blacks that they are invisible and we do not care what you would think of this sign. It is a message to blacks that segregation still exists and we deserve the best (which is the beautiful neighborhood in the picture). Some readers might not even pay attention to that sign and will focus on the beauty of the neighborhood.

Rankine is aware of the importance of the use of images to tell more about different social problems that words cannot tell. Human beings are more likely to remember pictures and videos more than words, especially those days because of technology. Rankine knows that the use of this kind of visual art complements the textual content and hooks the reader’s attention.