Book Discussion: Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Join us for a discussion of the novel Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.

Citizen: An American Lyric is a book-length poem and series of lyric essays that stretches the conventions of traditional lyric poetry by interweaving several forms of text and media into a collective portrait of racial relations in the United States. This groundbreaking book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, online, on TV—everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Claudia Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship.

This in-person book club meeting at the Marcy library (617 Dekalb Ave) requires registration.