Claudia Rankine’s book may or may not be poetry – the question becomes insignificant as one reads on. Her achievement is to have created a bold work that occupies its own space powerfully, an unsettled hybrid – her writing on the hard shoulder of prose. She eavesdrops on America and a racism that has never gone away. Citizen won the National Book Critics Circle poetry award in the US in recognition, partly, of the shocking truth it tells. Through brief encounters and troubling retellings of recent news, Rankine puts one, as a white reader, on constant alert for any unconscious racism in oneself.
Even the way the book has been published is bracingly correct. Rankine’s Jamaican origins are withheld – no mention of her roots on the cover. Similarly, when she describes meeting a novelist in London, she does not reveal his provenance. She sees to it we take ourselves to task: why should we want to know? Is it invariably a reflex likely to lead to hasty stereotyping? I always want to know where a person comes from – a journalist’s weakness. But Rankine reminds us there is nothing black and white about black and white.
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