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dreamgalaxies's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 stars. I immediately added this book to my TBR as soon as I saw it was being released because I found Rankine's work in Citizen so foundational to my understanding of Black life and white supremacist violence in the US. I highly recommend that book, which seems to me part of a sort of trilogy along with this book and Don't Let Me Be Lonely. This book differs, however, in that it is not as focused on poetry but instead dwells mostly in the space of personal essays. Of course, it is not easily classified, as it relies like Rankine's other work also on visual images and a variety of forms.
I was especially eager to read this book because the Racial Imaginary Institute that Rankine co-founded has been so inspiring to my own work, especially after seeing the Institute's panel at AWP on writing whiteness. The panel emphasized something I've learned doing antiracist training; reckoning not just with the race of POC but very specifically with your own whiteness is critical to learning to check your racial biases...as is accepting we have these biases and they are a part of us forever, mitigated somewhat by the work we do to challenge them. As Rankine asks the reader, “what are you thinking when you’re not thinking?”
I see some reviews complaining that this book is sort of behind the times because of its focus on the personal when discourse has moved somewhat toward the structural and supposedly "race blind" policies that continue to intensely negatively affect BIPOC in this country.
As someone who sees capitalism as an exceptionally harmful economic system I totally agree that a focus on structural policies is critical, but I also think that we need both. The extent to which even black people in non-precarious economic positions face this level of racism tells us all we need to know about that.
I think that the focus on personal interactions and Rankine’s deeply personalized analysis could help build a deeper understanding of interpersonal racism for white people who think they’ve got it all figured out. Said people when focusing on the structural often seem not to implicate themselves a bit when they can focus on structural issues that they are ‘not participating in.’
I don’t think Rankine should have to be asking the questions she is about what whiteness means to white people, but that’s still where we are in America today. I will say that I found the sections that were focused on other concepts (gender, Latinx identity) to fall a bit flat, maybe just in comparison to how Rankine’s expertise in Black identity shines. I was somewhat surprised how little she seemed to know about Latinx struggles but I appreciate her being candid about it here. One thing I found unsuccessful here were the attempts the author made to ‘fact check’ herself. I think this may have been a tongue in cheek reference to the world of alternative fact we all live in now but it didn’t land for me. Regardless, I did appreciate the additional notes and sources these sections provided.
I was especially eager to read this book because the Racial Imaginary Institute that Rankine co-founded has been so inspiring to my own work, especially after seeing the Institute's panel at AWP on writing whiteness. The panel emphasized something I've learned doing antiracist training; reckoning not just with the race of POC but very specifically with your own whiteness is critical to learning to check your racial biases...as is accepting we have these biases and they are a part of us forever, mitigated somewhat by the work we do to challenge them. As Rankine asks the reader, “what are you thinking when you’re not thinking?”
I see some reviews complaining that this book is sort of behind the times because of its focus on the personal when discourse has moved somewhat toward the structural and supposedly "race blind" policies that continue to intensely negatively affect BIPOC in this country.
As someone who sees capitalism as an exceptionally harmful economic system I totally agree that a focus on structural policies is critical, but I also think that we need both. The extent to which even black people in non-precarious economic positions face this level of racism tells us all we need to know about that.
I think that the focus on personal interactions and Rankine’s deeply personalized analysis could help build a deeper understanding of interpersonal racism for white people who think they’ve got it all figured out. Said people when focusing on the structural often seem not to implicate themselves a bit when they can focus on structural issues that they are ‘not participating in.’
I don’t think Rankine should have to be asking the questions she is about what whiteness means to white people, but that’s still where we are in America today. I will say that I found the sections that were focused on other concepts (gender, Latinx identity) to fall a bit flat, maybe just in comparison to how Rankine’s expertise in Black identity shines. I was somewhat surprised how little she seemed to know about Latinx struggles but I appreciate her being candid about it here. One thing I found unsuccessful here were the attempts the author made to ‘fact check’ herself. I think this may have been a tongue in cheek reference to the world of alternative fact we all live in now but it didn’t land for me. Regardless, I did appreciate the additional notes and sources these sections provided.
veecaswell's review
5.0
Taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy as a guiding light, Claudia Rankine explores a series of real encounters with friends and strangers...and urges us to enter into the conversations which could offer the only humane pathways through this moment of division.
‘An American Conversation’ is an apt name for this book. Rankine in Just Us writes likes she is in conversation with you the reader - the personal is political and this conversation is certainly both. In this book the author touches on marriage, children and friendship, particularly with white friends, and by making this book feel like a conversation you are part of it feels like the author is sharing something with you and keeps you absorbed throughout. With each conversation the author backs her conversation up with the sources giving more context with each chapter.
Though I do feel you need some background reading with this (Audre Lorde, Crenshaw, and maybe bell hooks?) to give you more of an understanding of the background, the writer throughout this book is insightful, thoughtful and honest and it stays with you. What stuck with me was a quote from the near the beginning of the book ‘’I wanted to say, “It’s not my point, it’s our reality,” but the declarative nature of the sentence felt sharp on my tongue’’ it’s these moments that make this book has so much integrity and you see the craft in the writing.
A book that I feel every white person should read, Just Us lets you in on a small part of what it feels like to live in America and be black, you read what the author is looking for and feeling when she goes into a school and notices the teaching isn’t diverse for example, seeing the differences in everyday life, you can understand to an extent what it is like to be wary of every facet of your life and how people cope with that, without the privilege of whiteness.
Highly recommend this, one of the best non fiction books I’ve ever read.
(I received an ARC from Netgalley for honest review).
james_j_igoe's review against another edition
5.0
Thoughtful, thought-provoking
I cry as I finish this, an eloquent, insightful, first-person view of our racist world, its white privilege, its micro-aggressions, its villains, and its heroes...
I cry as I finish this, an eloquent, insightful, first-person view of our racist world, its white privilege, its micro-aggressions, its villains, and its heroes...
jeremygoodjob's review against another edition
5.0
Whereas Citizen showed up and crystallized/named a network of associations around whiteness that white Americans were just beginning to acknowledge during the Obama presidency, Just Us documents white supremacy’s desperate backlash and fight for survival. What’s most compelling to me this time is the different place Rankine occupies as a vigilant, crisis-bound traveler and socializer. She spends a lot of time with white men and women, asking them about their whiteness, putting the comfort of a quiet plane ride (or even an old friendship) at stake.
Why not? I love the way the book concludes while meditating on that sentiment—Why not?—and the way she sees the phrase enabling people to move past history, while she herself relentlessly seeks it out. Every other page has some sort of fact checking, a nod to her constant, neurotic negotiation: Am I misremembering this history? Am I the crazy one in this room? No. Here’s the receipts.
The weirdest thing about the book is that it essentially ends with a footnote describing her friend’s reaction to reading the original manuscript, which Rankine then feels the need to explain (or defend) within the text the reader is looking at. It’s thematic and interesting—it is an American Conversation—but I think the ending sheds light on a shifting besieged/not besieged posture throughout the book that leaves me curious. I don’t usually finish reading something wanting to ask the writer questions, but the window Rankine gives us into her world is still somewhat obscure.
Why not? I love the way the book concludes while meditating on that sentiment—Why not?—and the way she sees the phrase enabling people to move past history, while she herself relentlessly seeks it out. Every other page has some sort of fact checking, a nod to her constant, neurotic negotiation: Am I misremembering this history? Am I the crazy one in this room? No. Here’s the receipts.
The weirdest thing about the book is that it essentially ends with a footnote describing her friend’s reaction to reading the original manuscript, which Rankine then feels the need to explain (or defend) within the text the reader is looking at. It’s thematic and interesting—it is an American Conversation—but I think the ending sheds light on a shifting besieged/not besieged posture throughout the book that leaves me curious. I don’t usually finish reading something wanting to ask the writer questions, but the window Rankine gives us into her world is still somewhat obscure.
jenlovesbooks's review against another edition
5.0
Thanks to #partner @NetGalley for the digital ARC of Claudia Rankine’s Just Us: An American Conversation in exchange for an honest review. The book will be published on Tuesday, September 8, 2020.
I will need to read Claudia Rankine’s Just Us again. I think it is brilliant and important and thoughtful, but I know that there’s more to absorb, more to contemplate. I read it too quickly this time, wrestled with the format of the e-book (I’m definitely going to buy it in print), and so I know that I missed details, connections, and nuance that would have enriched my reading experience even more.
Still, even on a first read, I loved it.
As she did in her gorgeous book Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine uses a mixture of poetry, essays, and images through Just Us: An American Conversation. The book moves between the main pieces and connective pieces that are woven alongside the text, providing sources, in-the-moment fact checks, and further reflection.
Rankine uses the intensely personal to explore the universal. She is wrestling with her own experiences as a way to grapple with American experience. She is both keenly aware of when she has been wronged . . . but she’s reflective and vulnerable enough to admit when she wrongs others, too.
Her scope is wide ranging. She uses brief meetings with strangers in airports and on planes, longer conversations with friends that puzzle her, and disagreements or moments of dissatisfaction with her husband to explore her topic. She’s aiming to define whiteness, as she does in one of her classes at Yale, to try to figure out what it means to be white and how her own identity relates to that definition. She’s constantly challenging her own assumptions, her friends’ assumptions, small comments that seem to offer a key that will unlock a new insight into race in America.
As she did in Citizen, Rankine presents her response in abstract and lyrical poetry, in meditations on things like tennis and college admissions, in social media, in her cancer, in her interracial marriage to a white husband. She’s looking for answers wherever she can. Often, after having written an essay about a conversation with someone, she then shares the essay with that person and shares his/her response. It’s fascinating, a true series of conversations that she’s developing with others and with herself.
At one point, a friend critiques what Rankine has written because “there’s no strategy here,” and Rankine replies, “response is my strategy. Endless responses and study and adjustments and compromises become a life” (334). It’s what we all do, on some level, I think (or at least I do!): we respond to what happens and then test our responses, absorbing new information and events and meetings and conversations into our understanding. And then we do it again.
This is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
I will need to read Claudia Rankine’s Just Us again. I think it is brilliant and important and thoughtful, but I know that there’s more to absorb, more to contemplate. I read it too quickly this time, wrestled with the format of the e-book (I’m definitely going to buy it in print), and so I know that I missed details, connections, and nuance that would have enriched my reading experience even more.
Still, even on a first read, I loved it.
As she did in her gorgeous book Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine uses a mixture of poetry, essays, and images through Just Us: An American Conversation. The book moves between the main pieces and connective pieces that are woven alongside the text, providing sources, in-the-moment fact checks, and further reflection.
Rankine uses the intensely personal to explore the universal. She is wrestling with her own experiences as a way to grapple with American experience. She is both keenly aware of when she has been wronged . . . but she’s reflective and vulnerable enough to admit when she wrongs others, too.
Her scope is wide ranging. She uses brief meetings with strangers in airports and on planes, longer conversations with friends that puzzle her, and disagreements or moments of dissatisfaction with her husband to explore her topic. She’s aiming to define whiteness, as she does in one of her classes at Yale, to try to figure out what it means to be white and how her own identity relates to that definition. She’s constantly challenging her own assumptions, her friends’ assumptions, small comments that seem to offer a key that will unlock a new insight into race in America.
As she did in Citizen, Rankine presents her response in abstract and lyrical poetry, in meditations on things like tennis and college admissions, in social media, in her cancer, in her interracial marriage to a white husband. She’s looking for answers wherever she can. Often, after having written an essay about a conversation with someone, she then shares the essay with that person and shares his/her response. It’s fascinating, a true series of conversations that she’s developing with others and with herself.
At one point, a friend critiques what Rankine has written because “there’s no strategy here,” and Rankine replies, “response is my strategy. Endless responses and study and adjustments and compromises become a life” (334). It’s what we all do, on some level, I think (or at least I do!): we respond to what happens and then test our responses, absorbing new information and events and meetings and conversations into our understanding. And then we do it again.
This is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
macrosinthemitten's review against another edition
5.0
Thought-provoking and, at times, uncomfortable. Examining my own race, what it means to be white and walk around in the world, is not always easy. I adored the author’s writing and. Lyrical and poetic but also brutal and blunt, she asks questions that are complicated and complex, that gave me pause.
jdintr's review against another edition
3.0
America needs racial justice. I believe that with all my heart, and I try to back that principle up with my actions (as a teacher, a Christian, a partner in community enterprises).
I also commit my brain to endorsing racial justice by seeking out Black voices. I take the voices I read, like Isabel Wilkerson and Tanehisi Coates, and I put them right into my curriculum at school. I'm not surprised by the seismic cultural changes, and I don't want this generation to be surprised either.
And yet, despite my commitment to racial justice, people treat me--a white, Christian, male, cisgender Southerner--like I just put took off a red MAGA hat before endorsing their perspective. On Twitter, I was blocked by an African-American author whom I had promoted and taught in my classroom. I lost a contract when a comment was misconstrued as racist. My own child took me to task this summer for my initial reaction to her boyfriend--a man of a different race--explaining in painfully elementary terms the words that I should and shouldn't say about him or in his presence.
Now if you're still reading this review, by now, I'm sure you're wondering, "Dear James, this should be a review of Just Us, not about you.
You might look in my closet for that MEGA hat. (I don't own one. It's sad that I need to put this in writing.)
But here's the point: the book, Just Us IS about me. It's more about me than about any other topic. That's because Rankine is obsessed about White Privilege, and her book connects the dots between random conversations she has with strangers who may or may not realize how clueless they are--who may or may not be hiding a MAGA hat in their carry-on bags.
That's not to say that her book isn't good. It is. Full of unique insights and meaningful connections. It just feels like they are darts aimed at the same square centimeter of the dart board. If readers are looking for more evidence of white malfeasance, they will find it here. If they themselves are white, they will get an earful.
One good example is an exchange Rankine shares with a colleague who had studied white attitudes about the seismic changes I mentioned above:
What about me? If I had a misconstrued stereotype of my whiteness and maleness, they were exploded by reading. I was never the same after the spring of 1992 when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Native Son, and they were obliterated by the horrible injustice that led to the LA riots two months later.
For a reader like me, who considers himself liberal but who is consistently mis-branded because of my race, faith, and gender, there wasn't a lot new in Just Us . The "American Conversation" of the subtitle felt more like a diatribe.
But I did enjoy the book. Rankine's use of multimedia--and her reference to interesting artists whom I looked up as I made my way through the book--is welcome, and really helps to amplify her message. I just wish that I could find Black voices who are inclusive and encouraging to the likes of me, less strident.
I also commit my brain to endorsing racial justice by seeking out Black voices. I take the voices I read, like Isabel Wilkerson and Tanehisi Coates, and I put them right into my curriculum at school. I'm not surprised by the seismic cultural changes, and I don't want this generation to be surprised either.
And yet, despite my commitment to racial justice, people treat me--a white, Christian, male, cisgender Southerner--like I just put took off a red MAGA hat before endorsing their perspective. On Twitter, I was blocked by an African-American author whom I had promoted and taught in my classroom. I lost a contract when a comment was misconstrued as racist. My own child took me to task this summer for my initial reaction to her boyfriend--a man of a different race--explaining in painfully elementary terms the words that I should and shouldn't say about him or in his presence.
Now if you're still reading this review, by now, I'm sure you're wondering, "Dear James, this should be a review of Just Us, not about you.
You might look in my closet for that MEGA hat. (I don't own one. It's sad that I need to put this in writing.)
But here's the point: the book, Just Us IS about me. It's more about me than about any other topic. That's because Rankine is obsessed about White Privilege, and her book connects the dots between random conversations she has with strangers who may or may not realize how clueless they are--who may or may not be hiding a MAGA hat in their carry-on bags.
That's not to say that her book isn't good. It is. Full of unique insights and meaningful connections. It just feels like they are darts aimed at the same square centimeter of the dart board. If readers are looking for more evidence of white malfeasance, they will find it here. If they themselves are white, they will get an earful.
One good example is an exchange Rankine shares with a colleague who had studied white attitudes about the seismic changes I mentioned above:
"I asked Dow what he learned in his conversations with white men. 'They are strugling to construct a just narrative for themselves as new information comes in, and they are having to refashion their own narratives and coming up short.... We are seeing the deconstruction of the white-male archetype. The individual actor on the grand stage always had the support of a genocidal government, but this is not the narrative we grew up with.'"
What about me? If I had a misconstrued stereotype of my whiteness and maleness, they were exploded by reading. I was never the same after the spring of 1992 when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Native Son, and they were obliterated by the horrible injustice that led to the LA riots two months later.
For a reader like me, who considers himself liberal but who is consistently mis-branded because of my race, faith, and gender, there wasn't a lot new in Just Us . The "American Conversation" of the subtitle felt more like a diatribe.
But I did enjoy the book. Rankine's use of multimedia--and her reference to interesting artists whom I looked up as I made my way through the book--is welcome, and really helps to amplify her message. I just wish that I could find Black voices who are inclusive and encouraging to the likes of me, less strident.
pattydsf's review against another edition
4.0
“Among white people, black people are allowed to talk about their precarious lives, but they are not allowed to implicate the present company in that precariousness. They are not allowed to point out its causes. In ‘Sexism—a Problem with a Name,’ Sara Ahmed writes that ‘if you name the problem you become the problem.’ To create discomfort by pointing out facts is seen as socially unacceptable. Let’s get over ourselves, it’s structural not personal, I want to shout at everyone, including myself.”
I cannot do justice to this book. I am repeating myself because that is close to what I said about Rankin’s book Citizen. This book is a powerful look at our country from someone who has a very different viewpoint than most people I know. I want to talk to someone about Rankins words, her ideas and where she takes her readers in these essays.
I am discomforted by much of what she has to say. Many of the essays made me consider the world in new ways. The essay that struck me the hardest is on blondeness, but they are all changing my viewpoint.
What will we ever do about this whiteness that so many Americans cannot see and those who see it and are privileged by it won’t give it up?
I cannot do justice to this book. I am repeating myself because that is close to what I said about Rankin’s book Citizen. This book is a powerful look at our country from someone who has a very different viewpoint than most people I know. I want to talk to someone about Rankins words, her ideas and where she takes her readers in these essays.
I am discomforted by much of what she has to say. Many of the essays made me consider the world in new ways. The essay that struck me the hardest is on blondeness, but they are all changing my viewpoint.
What will we ever do about this whiteness that so many Americans cannot see and those who see it and are privileged by it won’t give it up?
emmaito's review against another edition
4.0
"I sometimes joke that my optimism has been stolen by white supremacy.
Don't be burdened by white supremacy, my friend responds.
The 'toomuchness' of our present reality sometimes gives rise to humor but could occasion disassociation, detachment from engagement, a refusal to engage in our democractic practices given how structural and invasive white supremacy remains.
A white supremacist orientation is packaged as universal thinking and objective seeing, which insists on the erasure of anyone - my actual presence, my humanity - who disrupts its reflection. Its form of being.
The idea that one can stand apart is a nice fantasy but we can't afford fantasies."
claudia rankine's just us: an american conversation is a powerful book that requires a lot of sitting with it. i loved the format of this book, which felt so unique. claudia rankine shares with us & reflects on her experiences & thoughts on whiteness in the United States through not just her excellent writing, but also through poetry, photos, & historical documents. my copy is dotted with tabs, pointing to not just memorable quotes, but also to sources that rankine gives for deeper understanding. this book is not a quick read, but it is well-worth the time.
Don't be burdened by white supremacy, my friend responds.
The 'toomuchness' of our present reality sometimes gives rise to humor but could occasion disassociation, detachment from engagement, a refusal to engage in our democractic practices given how structural and invasive white supremacy remains.
A white supremacist orientation is packaged as universal thinking and objective seeing, which insists on the erasure of anyone - my actual presence, my humanity - who disrupts its reflection. Its form of being.
The idea that one can stand apart is a nice fantasy but we can't afford fantasies."
claudia rankine's just us: an american conversation is a powerful book that requires a lot of sitting with it. i loved the format of this book, which felt so unique. claudia rankine shares with us & reflects on her experiences & thoughts on whiteness in the United States through not just her excellent writing, but also through poetry, photos, & historical documents. my copy is dotted with tabs, pointing to not just memorable quotes, but also to sources that rankine gives for deeper understanding. this book is not a quick read, but it is well-worth the time.