Citizen Reading: Initial Reaction

When I bought this from the bookstore I was expecting it to be more like a novel; with all my other readings in place I honestly had not bothered to open the book until Friday night when I attended her reading. If one were to look at the pages without examining the contents they might assume it is a novel and meant to be read as such. Maybe a lot of poetry nowadays is written in paragraph form. I don't read much of this genre to know. Regardless hearing the manner in which she read was a really good introduction to this type of poetry and it helped me pace me reading a little bit better when I began the other portions not covered at her event.

The ordinary but vivid descriptions of various scenarios (some of which she described in regular speech at her event Friday) made me a little tense while reading. The events described may come off as a little mundane but the book seems aimed towards the goal of painting a picture of what living these situations out on a regular basis would be like. Some of it made me sick. And perhaps I overthought myself being in similar situations. Whenever I hear accounts of blatantly unfair treatment and a suppressive force against victims talking about it I tend to get carried away and it makes reading further more difficult. That's not to say this book is unpleasant to read. The reality behind it isn't a defect.

The syntax and word choice is, at times, peculiar. I'm still not sure what to make of a few passages. I understand that poetry is meant to be interpreted and it's not rigidly structured like the sciences are, but sometimes I'm not too interested in interpretation. I suppose some parts of it I won't receive quite as clearly because I'm not inside the represented demographic. While the book's purpose seems to be to reduce the erasure that minorities encounter, other parts of it are probably better understood by those who have actually encountered the situations depicted in the book.

Overall, from my reading of this book and her presentation on Friday, I am impressed with Rankine.