Claudia Rankine a renown poet, uses her novel “Citizen: An American Lyric” to discuss issues of race and imagination. Claudia Rankine is an absolute master of poetry and uses her gripping accounts of racism, through poetry to share a deep message. Claudia Rankine uses poetry to correlate directly to accounts of racism making Citizen a profound experience to read. Not only is this poetic novel a vision of her world through her eyes, Rankine uses the experiences of Americans whose color has rendered them invisible to the many who are privileged enough to be blind and not note racism as a large issue in America. Claudia Rankine articulates the use of you and further emphasizes the larger meaning of the title Citizen and recognizing that word through societal issues. Claudia Rankine tries to trouble the notion of citizenship in many …show more content…
The word citizen is a term that is very fraught and at times contradictory in its underlying meaning and message being shared and shifts throughout the text. Not only does the word Citizen imply various meanings, but as a repetition in the text, the word “you” shifts as well which directly correlates to the theme of the title. A perfect example of you shifting meaning in text from showing that you directly becomes a term relating to an individual being an outsider in a community whereas throughout the text Claudia Rankine uses you as a ideology to show individuality with oneself.
An exemplary example of Claudia Rankine's shift with the word you, is a situation in which she addresses you as racial minority and showing a white person on the outside. On page 131 of Citizen, a white women and a racial minority have an interaction in which the women blatantly shows her rejection of him and shares a desire to stay clear away from him by not sitting next to him in an empty train cart. In this poem, Claudia Rankine explores the in depth aspect of
Instead, he implores them to be more political. His goal in writing is to make people aware of the social injustices occurring. The Negro writer who seeks to function within his race as a purposeful aren has a serious responsibility. In order to do justice to his subject matter, in order to depict Negro life in all of its manifold and intricate relationships, a deep, informed, and complex consciousness is necessary; a consciousness which draws for its strength upon the fluid lore of a great people, and more this lore with concepts that move and direct the forces of history today (Wright,
In doing so, Semley calls into question what it means to be “free and French,” as Touissant Louverture famously said while delivering his Constitution in Le Cap in 1801. Citizenship is more than legal rights and the cultural aspect is just as meritorious as any legal procedure. Semley’s book follows a roughly chronological outline of events in the French empire, using case studies on different figures and groups of people in different areas of the empire. Semley weaves together a cohesive narrative by connecting the individuals and places in these stories to create a cascading effect that makes it easy to understand the gradual evolution of citizenship and its relationship to people of color.
Civil rights issues stand at the core of Anne Moody’s memoir. However, because my last two journal entries centered on race and the movement, I have decided to shift my focus. In her adolescent years, Anne Moody must live with her mother, her mother’s partner Raymond, and her increasing number of siblings. As she reaches maturity, she grows to be a beautiful girl with a developed body. Her male peers and town members notice, as does her step father Raymond.
In the mind-opening short story, “Borders” by Thomas King, King communicates that the risk of defying authority is not able to outweigh the rewards that come subsequently. A compelling way that King was able to do that is by using repetition and characterizing the mother as someone who doesn’t want to give up her identity when she encounters people who want her to fit in with a group of people that she doesn’t believe aligns with her identity. For example, on page 134, a mother and son encounter a border guard as they attempt to cross the U.S.-Canadian border to get into the United States of America legally. The border guard is required to ask them about their citizenship. However, as simple as this may be, the conversation takes a turn, and it happens like this, “‘Citizenship?’
In How It Feels To Be Colored Me by Zora Neal Hurston well as in The Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr both authors convey what it feels like to be face with race issues. The two essays shed light on the social issues in different ways. The essays show the struggles of life when those around the two authors do not fully grasp the concept. Both Hertz and King use tone, their audience, and point of view to get their point across with the goal of bringing a better understanding to their audience.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” highlights the experiences of a woman of color in the early 1920s who is stripped of her personal pride of her own identity by a racist society. Despite her odds, Hurston chooses to mentally combat the racist ideals and beliefs of the time that were being pressured upon her by society. This led her to regain her own personal power in her pride for her identity as a woman of color. Hurston grew up with pride in her identity as a black girl, in a small colored town where it had never been challenged before. Then, as she is introduced to a mixed city for her education, her strength in her cultural identity is challenged by racist beliefs.
In this book Glory is overwhelmed with how her town is handling people who are different than they are. She realizes that her favorite local pool is closing down so colored people can’t swim with the whites. Glory becomes an activist herself and writes a letter to the newspaper lining which makes her preacher father proud. Therefore, the theme of this book is to treat everyone equally, such as when Glory’s friend Frankie from Ohio drinks out of the “colored fountain”. Also, when Glory’s sisters boyfriend that he was arrested for sitting with a “colored friend” at the white table.
Although miscegenation is not a new topic, the effects that this phenomenon has on people’s lives has been the source of inspiration for many literary works. “Miscegenation” by Natasha Trethewey is an autobiographical poem that expresses the difficulty that mixed-race people face in accepting their identity in a society that discriminates people who are different. That is, this poem expresses how racial discrimination can affect the identity of those people who do not identify as white or black. Besides, in this poem, Trethewey narrates her origin, as well as how her parents were victims of a society that did not accept their relationship. Therefore, the speaker starts by saying “In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi” (Trethewey 1); those two laws that broke the Trethewey’s parents were that they were married and had a daughter.
Racism and racial inequality was extremely prevalent in America during the 1950’s and 1960’s. James Baldwin shows how racism can poison and make a person bitter in his essay “Notes of a Native Son”. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “A Letter from Birmingham Jail” also exposes the negative effects of racism, but he also writes about how to combat racism. Both texts show that the violence and hatred caused from racism form a cycle that never ends because hatred and violence keeps being fed into it. The actions of the characters in “Notes of a Native Son” can be explain by “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”, and when the two texts are paired together the racism that is shown in James Baldwin’s essay can be solved by the plan Dr. King proposes in his
Literary Techniques and Overall Meaning Poetry is a very important and respected type of literature, and one that covers a vast range of topics. Some of the most impressive and response-invoking poems are those that cover more sensitive topics, such as discrimination and racism. Discrimination is a topic not overwhelmingly seen in poetry, but often very interesting to read. Author Sekou Sundiata creates a prime example of this in “Blink Your Eyes.”
By using sparse and poignant language throughout the twelve-line poem and particularly in the second stanza in which the racist ‘incident’ occurred, Cullen is able to strongly impact the reader in a very short time, guaranteeing lasting interest and
It’s been 53 years since President Lyndon Johnson enforced the Civils Rights Act of 1964, but racism is still an ongoing issue to this day, whether it’s intentionally or inadvertently caused by the people in our society. Cornelius Eady evaluates the concept of racism through his poem, “The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off,” which focuses on the views of a prejudiced cab driver. Eady’s literary works focuses largely on the issue of racism within our society, centering on the trials that African Americans face in the United States. “The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off” from Autobiography of a Jukebox is an influential poem that successfully challenges the problems associated with racism, which is a touchy, yet prevalent problem that needs to be addressed.
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is a hybrid and communal text constructed out of varying poetic form accompanied by contrasting imagery, and historical events. Rankine, although the author of this text is not necessarily its narrator. She plays with prospective, switching the fundamental meaning of “you” and pulls from the personal experiences of her friends, colleagues, and surrounding community. Rankine is able to incorporate “an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in [her] writing”, blur the line between various genres, and “[reject] … elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist design”, which are the pillars of postmodern works (Klages). She utilizes historical and modern events such as the Jim Crow laws, affirmative
“On the Subway,” written by Sharon Olds, is written from the perspective of what is presumed to be an upper class white woman, who finds herself on a subway with a lower class black boy. In “On the Subway”, Olds focuses on the controversial issue of racial conflict, and the theme of White v. Black. She does so by use of contrast between whites and blacks, by using harsh enjambments, powerful imagery, and by using the tone to convey the purpose. A major strategy used by Olds throughout the poem is contrast; in this case, the contrast between blacks and whites.
Words have the power to create great things just like they have the power to destroy them. Claudia Rankine uses her book, Citizen: An American Lyric, to illustrate the idea that racism has become an everyday component of our society. This book expresses the idea that language normalizes the existence of racism. This particular