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lbrex 's review for:
Just Us: An American Conversation
by Claudia Rankine
I read this over a series of nights before bed, and found it to be incisive, interesting, and highly effective at making me uncomfortable. Rankine zeroes in on a series of interactions, some of them impersonal ones in airports, others conversations with colleagues, and some conflicts with friends; she then unpacks how all of these different interactions are shaped by whiteness (and, in many cases, by white men). I appreciate the critical insight that she brings to these interactions and the intimacy that she is willing to create in this book, as I often thought of how I would reply to the questions that she is asking of strangers, colleagues, and friends. The book convinced me of things I had heard before and also helped me think about the intersection between politics and interpersonal connections in terms of my whiteness. There are many highlights in _Just Us_, but the discussion of blond hair and its meaning was especially interesting, as are all of the red-dot footnotes that Rankine uses to "fact check" her assertions by bringing in outside research, examples from social media, historical sources, and relevant photographs. I strongly recommend this book!