Citizen: An American Lyric
Genre: Nonfiction
Original publication date: October 2014
Book description: Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, 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, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.
Thoughts:
This is a powerful, emotional, and truthful retelling of situations people never pay attention to and yet happen all around.
We see different very simple everyday actions of people who suffer racism very obviously and yet the people around do not speak up, some even contribute "without meaning to"
the perfect example is one of the firs tones mentioned.
*A friend is asked to pick up the kids from school and babysit. The police are called the neighbor calls them in when a suspicious man is walking in front of the house.
Its the friend who is helping to babysit. The comment that is over the top, the owner of the house says: "Next time you want to ake a call, just go to the back yard"
What!?
But comments like that are the ones that hurt the most. Why should you be the one to modify your actions simply because people want to assume the worst about others simply based on their race?
No that is wrong!!!
We have a very emotional read, with plenty of examples of how people suffer discrimination, another one was the very well known obvious bad calls in professional Tenis matches, televised and yet the people there still behave so abhorrently. They make bad calls against Serena Williams simply because and the situation continues and continues. she is the only player mentioned by name but surely there are plenty of others who also suffered the same.
There a re a lot of examples I could mention, but it is a very good read. If you are the type of people who don't have too much time to read or have pretty full TBRs this is a perfect option its a short quick read. Recommend to pick a few up, there are plenty of options out there.
This is something people should read you need to be pointed out what your "innocent" comments look like? It should not be necessary to be explained, humanity can't be that ignorant and yet the same mentality has been had for such a long time that it is hard to realize your actions and their impact as you are doing them. Let this be a call out, you are so used to a mentality that you don't realize the discrimination you are doing on your own.
We need to change! It's important to stop the off-hand comments people make, think before you speak please!
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