Citizen: My thoughts

When approaching the book as a form of protest, I aim my focus towards looking for cause to the author’s problem. Claudia Rankine says in one of her stories “because white men can’t police their imagination black people are dying” (135). The message she is conveying is quite clear in that statement. It seems like a simple truth. When looking at the work as poetry, the message I sense is more emotional. Rankine has more emotionally charged phrases, such as: “So sorry. So angry, an imploding anger. It must let you go. It let you go (95).” With a poetic lens, I see emotions as the main justification to get rid of the problem. The stories are expressed with a certain rhythm that intertwines with the body to give a stronger connection to the audience.

As a reader, the book is in second person with a variety of “you” statements all throughout the book but in a “lighter” sense. With the audience, the messages will give elicit a form of guilt when the audience experiences the instances in the lives of people of color. This gives a stronger appeal to the purpose of understanding racism in America. If it comes to the point that every reader feels guilt, then every reader is part of the audience that needs to understand how people are being treated just because they have a different amount of melanin in their skin. “You can’t walk away because you feel bad” (65).

The book makes me think of how limited the emotional responses are for the individual stories. There’s never a point of reflection, and there’s a limited amount of vulgarity. If I were in these situations, I feel the verbal responses are toned down for the fact it’s a formal novel. Is it possible that Rankine is using the fact the poetry gives the emotional sense and the stories appear objectively to establish a concrete argument?

What strikes me strongly about the book is the tragedy enveloped by grace aspect of it. Majority of the stories express little bits of chaos for the amount of horrid content in them. The stories are fluid to give the impression that events like the ones in the novel occur on a daily basis (and some do). I believe the purpose is for that reason.  If someone makes a story sound like a once in a while horrific event, people wouldn’t look to implement change in their lives. If they see it happens every day, they might change their way of living to move away from the horrific events.