Citizen: An American Lyric

Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric, was born in Kingston, Jamaica. She earned an undergraduate degree at Williams College and an MFA at Columbia University. It is ambiguous how much of Citizen is autobiographical, but it has been speculated that many sections are first-hand experiences of Rankine. The narrative does, at times, take place in spaces Rankine inhibits, particularly those scenes set in academia. 

Citizen is written largely in the second-person point of view. Often, this “you,” is a proxy for Rankine—an accomplished black woman of the professional class—other times the subject-position is less clear or shifts in regard to the particulars of its identity. For example, in many of the vignettes, the “you” is not always black and the referent of “she” or “he” is not always white. Rankine muddies the personas and pronouns, forcing the reader to engage with these identities a little more intimately while at the same time asking the reader to question what the meaning and experience of race in American today. This technique reaches its apex at the conclusion of Citizen, in which the pronouns meld together: “I they he she we you turn / only to discover / the encounter / to be alien to this place” (140).