Citizen: An American Lyric

* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award *

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
The New Yorker, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, NPR. Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Slate, Time Out New York, Vulture, Refinery 29, and many more . . .

A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

Author: Claudia Rankine
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 10/07/2014
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.7lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.50w x 0.30d
ISBN: 9781555976903


Award: National Book Awards - Finalist
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist
Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Winner
Award: Literary Award - Winner
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner
Award: Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/18/2014
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2014
Booklist 10/15/2014 pg. 11
New Yorker (The) 10/27/2014 pg. 73
Library Journal 11/01/2014 pg. 102
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/03/2014 pg. 32
LJ Best Books of Year 12/01/2014 pg. 34
Christian Century 12/10/2014 pg. 31
New York Times Book Review 12/28/2014 pg. 9
New York Times Book Review 01/04/2015 pg. 22
New York Review of Books 04/23/2015 pg. 39
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/06/2015 pg. 26

About the Author
Claudia Rankine is the author of four previous books, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. She currently is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Pomona College.