Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

- Google

The 785th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - 6th on A Premature Attempt at the 21st Century Canon (Vulture)
  2. - 43rd on The 100 best books of the 21st century (The Guardian)
  3. - 25 Books to Read Before you Die: 21st Century (Powell's Books)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
Citizen: An American Lyric Kindle Edition 61321 2014
Citizen: An American Lyric Paperback 1493726 $10.58 $9.19
Citizen: An American Lyric Audio CD 4808113 $18.52 $15.14 2015
Citizen: An American Lyric Paperback 17277 $5.68 $1.90 2014