A Citizen's Review
By Matthew Johannes, Intern Writer
|
|
Edited By Kiara Timo-Vaughn, Lead Editorial Intern
|
|
It has been said that art is the key to social and political change. While protests and doctrines can express ideas and concepts, only art can penetrate into the hearts of the opposition and the lukewarm and convey the underlying emotions at the heart of the social issue. If this is true, and art is one of the strongest weapons for change than it does not seem a great leap to say that literature, and in particular poetry, stands as queen among those non-violent weapons. This was certainly, what I thought while reading Citizen: An American Lyric, a book of poems by the award-winning poet Claudia Rankine.
|
Citizen describes the experience of a Black person living in America over the course of seven chapters, each uniquely different in terms of style and area explored, yet similar in their overarching theme of describing the effects of biases and micro-aggressions on the psyches of black Americans.
Citizen is written entirely in the second person present tense, an uncommon style of writing yet one uniquely suited to the message Citizen offers. The “you” of second person tense holds a punchy weight in Citizen forcing the reader to look at the traumatic experiences described in the poems not as abstract events happening to complete strangers, but as clear and present aggressions inflicted on a viewpoint that you cannot help but relate to. The poems ask the reader to imagine themselves in the writer’s shoes and to feel the force of the antagonism directed toward the narrator as if they themselves were feeling it.
Citizen is written entirely in the second person present tense, an uncommon style of writing yet one uniquely suited to the message Citizen offers. The “you” of second person tense holds a punchy weight in Citizen forcing the reader to look at the traumatic experiences described in the poems not as abstract events happening to complete strangers, but as clear and present aggressions inflicted on a viewpoint that you cannot help but relate to. The poems ask the reader to imagine themselves in the writer’s shoes and to feel the force of the antagonism directed toward the narrator as if they themselves were feeling it.
Early on in Citizen one poem relates a story in which the narrator meets with her employer and is told that he hired her because his dean forced him to hire a person of color. In the car on the way back she wonders why he thought that it would ok for him to say that to her, if she had somehow broadcasted a certain attitude to him that made it seem acceptable. Her sequence of thoughts leads her to ponder a medical term called John Henryism which describes the thought processes that people adopt in order to try to deal with the stress buildup from being subjected to a constantly racist environment. This racism inspired stress and the subsequent coping mechanisms that arise seem to be one of the main themes that the poems in Citizen ask us to view. Another theme connected to this that we see throughout Citizen is the feeling of mitigation or “erasure” whereby a person is forced to deal with being viewed as somehow “less” or subhuman, regardless of their inner life or achievements, due to their skin color.
Another theme of the book connected to the erasure is the feeling of being put against a stark white background, a phenomena that Citizen highlights through reference to Serena Williams’ career. Citizen describes how the powers that governed the world of tennis did not accept her due to her blackness in a sport primarily viewed as white. Citizen highlights, in particular, a match that Williams unfairly lost after the umpire made a succession of unfair calls against her. Throughout the book, Rankine includes images that pertain to and highlight the issues she tackles in her poems. One of the first images is a photo of a “Jim Crow” road somewhere in the south that runs alongside a suburban neighborhood with white houses. Another photo depicts a white tennis player making fun of Serena Williams by padding her chest and butt with towels. Another one, which connects viscerally to the second chapter of the book depicts the a white background with black words written across it repeating the phrases, “I do not always feel colored.” and “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” These images interplay well with the poems and help to enhance the vivid imagery already found in the words. Citizen is an excellent book of poetry well suited to our era. As I read it I could not help but think of it as an effective weapon, puncturing hearts not with steel but with words and giving the reader insight into the writer's emotions and experiences and providing benefit to them not only artistically, but also by shaping the way they view the political and social issues the book addresses. |