Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

52 reviews

viaviaggi's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Racial slurs, and Racism

Minor: Slavery

alliemikennareads's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful reflective fast-paced

5.0

Classified as lyrical verse / essays but I consider this somewhere in the poetry genre as well because the writing is extremely poetic. One of the best books I’ve ever read, I will most certainly return to this again. Rankine gives you a window into some of the many micro-aggressions and moments of racism that Black people experience in their day to day life. Each verse is a snapshot depicting a full story in rich detail despite the short length. Very thought provoking. I absolutely would recommend to pretty much anyone because the writing is stunning. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence, Hate crime, and Racism

kalbalde's review against another edition

emotional reflective fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism

Moderate: Police brutality

ablaine's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Police brutality

julianeedscaffeine's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Racial slurs, and Cursing

Moderate: Violence

keeganrb's review against another edition

challenging emotional fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism

annasophie's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

I was floored reading this. It’s beyond me how Rankine manages to pack so much into relatively few, short sentences; so much into such small glimpses of interactions and situations.

I’m puzzled over how I would describe her wording—is it incredibly concise or necessarily vague? I don’t know the answer, but what she achieves here can only be done by someone with a great understanding of and feeling for how language works. Absolutely gorgeous work and of course very important.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism

Moderate: Violence

paigeisinabook's review against another edition

informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

4 December 2021: Hold up. I need to read that again.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism

There is use of the n-word in this collection.

lara_bk's review against another edition

challenging medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Police brutality, and Hate crime

Moderate: Gun violence and Violence

Minor: Death

thecolourblue's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective tense fast-paced

3.75

This was hard to rate because there were parts of this book (particularly in the first half) that were strong, poetic, elegant but fierce, polemic but anxious... like the literary equivalent of tightly-strung razor wire. Rankine is at her best in these prose-meets-stream-of-consciousness-honesty moments.

But... the more traditionally formatted poetry in this book was for me not as strong as in Just Us, which I read first, and the second half of the book included a big chunk of ‘situation’ video scripts which honestly lost me a bit. I think there must have been readings of the book where video and audio were included in a multimedia experience, and I imagine that setting may have been much more effective, but in the on-the-page format I read them in, it just wasn’t connecting for me. That said, I admire any effort to do something different and experimental in book format.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism