Citizen

Usually while reading poetry, I like to identify the creative writing strategies that are used throughout and how they are used to fulfill the writer’s purpose. For Rankine’s Citizen, the overall purpose of protest was already known to me, which allowed me to have a great appreciation for her writing style and how she uses her poetry to protest. Reading this text as protest poetry caused the meaning and purpose to be stronger to me, and each word felt heavier in my mind. While reading, I didn’t necessarily feel as though Rankine was addressing me, as the reader, personally. I think that Citizen was meant to educate the public in general, not necessarily go about pointing fingers or urging people to get involved. It invites people to get involved indirectly by telling these stories. The way that the audience becomes involved is through this learning process of the situations and the true problem that is involved here.

The images that were used throughout Citizen really helped to add to the darker feeling of the text in general, starting with the haunting photo on the cover. I enjoyed how the images added to the text visually, allowing for the text to be somewhat interrupted throughout. One question that I have is why Rankine chose to include the images in general. From my past experience with poetry, some writers chose to shy away from using things such as illustrations and photos in order to avoid drawing their readers away from the text, bringing their minds back into the world. While reading, I enjoyed the images greatly and thought that they added a depth to the text, but it was an interesting choice overall.

Overall, I think that Rankine’s protest writing style is very nice. There was a great amount of flow and rhythm with her words, which allowed the text to be intriguing. The thing that strikes me most about the text was reading the stories in general. It opened my eyes up to a lot of different situations, which I believe to be one of Rankine’s primary purposes through this text.