Citizen (Post 1)

I found this reading to be quite interesting because the hashtag “#blacklivesmatter” has been a movement that I have been following through media and through friends/family. I never realized the impact of this ongoing protest. Thus, I feel this book has done an excellent job at portraying and capturing all of the hurt, the ambiguity, the frustration, and the empowerment of the movement as a protest. Further, I believe there is a fine line between reading the text as protest versus poetry; the main difference is that I understood Citizen as a collection of narratives from various individuals instead of the work of one single person. I do not believe Claudia Rankine had a sole audience that she wished to address in her book. Instead, I think that this book was intended to have a diverse audience that would take something from the reading that would challenge and transform their thinking in terms of racial identities and stigmas. Personally, I thought the book was well put together. I really enjoyed the visual elements that were along the text. However, many of the images made me stop to think of the meaning behind them as it was at times, unclear. Two of my favorite art clips from the book stem from pages 33 and 87. On page 33, Soundsuits by Nick Cave, allowed me to imagine the beauty in culture and diversity; and, on page 87, Uncertain, yet Reserved by Toyin Odutola, brought me to imagine the hurt and pain individuals feel when their culture is ridiculed or marginalized. The voice of the misrepresented population from the book is what struck me the most. The voice helped the reader get through the emotional rollercoaster ride they joined from the first page. I found the part of the book that states, “It is the White Man who creates the black man. But it is the black man who creates,” (pg. 128) to be very thought provoking. My first reaction was to why the words “White Man” were capitalized and not “black man.” Secondly, I wondered what the author wanted the reader and audience to take from the last part that says, “But it is the black man that creates.” Two final questions that popped into my head were, how do people of other races, ethnicities, cultures, etc. react to this reading and how do they intend to help the protest and its intentions?

 

Works Cited:
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2014. Print.