Citizen: An American Lyric Initial Reaction

Citizen explores what it means to be an African American citizen. It is an amalgam of countless discriminatory injustices and exposes the nuances of discrimination. Because the book is a form of protest through poetry, Rankine’s writing style, especially sentence fluency and figurative language, reflects the sentiment associated with being oppressed and is not just merely a rendition of poetic language.  For example, on page 15, Rankine recounts a personal experience (as revealed at the lecture I attended on Friday) in which her neighbor called the police on her friend, who happened to be African American. The sentences that described the experience were very short and staccato, reflecting her struggle to narrate the story and exacerbating the suffocation her friend experienced. Unfortunately, as Rankine pointed out at the lecture, these injustices that African Americans experience are so common that most people suppress them; “ this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on” (Rankine 151). However, she points out, when they do remember about their personal encounters with discrimination, they can’t stop talking; their anger is “built up through experience and …struggles against dehumanization every…black person lives simply because of skin color” (24).   She showcases stories about infamous events or people where these biases exist; for example, Serena Williams faced adversity in her career in tennis due to injustices related to her skin color. Rankine even narrates a variety of stories from multiple perspectives of what discrimination looks like. Sometimes, its simply stating “I didn’t know you were black!”, which is something that may seem harmless to many Americans, but is considered offensive (44). Additionally, she vividly describes the inevitable emotions related to unjust bias; on page 131, she talks about a black man who sits on a train. There is an empty seat beside him, but a woman decides to stand instead of taking the seat. Although someone sat next to him and, thus, filled the space, “the space belongs to the man” (131).  The reason is that the void is symbolic of the pain. Unquestionably, through the poems, Rankine urges for change; she requests this by evoking emotions and understanding from the non-black audience, informing them of the adversities of having darker skin.