“Citizen throws a Molotov cocktail at the notion that reduction of injustice is the same as freedom.”
―The New York Times Book Review
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen uses a poetic frame to uncover an insidious racism embedded in the everyday, from Main Street USA to the lecture halls of the Ivory Tower. An offhand comment or a helpful call from a neighbor can carry ominous weight, as Rankine’s observations move from bewilderment to disappointment to quiet ire. Citizen is a true revelation—it leaves its readers unsettled, moved, and changed with every page.
Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyricand Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Inquiry: Writers in the Life of the Mind. For her book Citizen, Rankine won both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award, the NAACP Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her nuemous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Ednowmen of the Arts. She lives in California and is the Aerol Arnold Chair in the University of Southern California English Department.
This program is presented in partnership with the Scripps College Humanities Institute and the Alexa Fullterton Hampton ’42 Endowed Speaker Fund.
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