lofiultraviolet 's review for:

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

2.5

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

---

Intriguing and important, but not for me (and perhaps not for many). As a TA this book was assigned to my freshmen comp class by the professor, and they didn't seem to get it. Reading it now (three years since it was assigned to the students I was aiding), as somebody with a little bit of experience with poetry but not much, I found myself struggling to fully connect with the text. I loved some sections, such as the first, whereas other sections felt like a mixed bag and dragged (VI in particular). There are some beautiful and breathtaking lines and concepts, but much of it I find isn't very accessible. This means I wouldn't recommend introducing the full text to a class of freshmen students as an introduction to both analyzing poetry/literature and to the issue of racism. A guided close-read of some excerpts would be interesting though. 

Which is totally okay, to be clear! Not every text needs to be easy or accessible. But on a personal level, while it impressed me, Citizen: An American Lyric did not connect with me.