The poem is built up of paraphrases and quotations from Zinedine, Franz Fanon, William Shakespeare, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and many more. This may be to remind the reader that 'you' are always part of the story and the associated injustices. That evening, a group of white boys strung up nooses on the tree. The second poem, "February 26, 2012 / In Memory of Trayvon Martin," the narrator asserts that her brothers, who are notoriously normal, doing things like waiting and saying the narrator's name on her birthday, have been imprisoned. When the unidentified speaker says that “boys will be boys,” she echoes a phrase people often use to excuse otherwise unacceptable behavior. Although it’s never stated that this man is African American, the protagonist’s empathy suggests that the main reason nobody is sitting next to him is because he is a black man—and, of course, because they have preconceived and unfair ideas about what this means. Stop-and-frisk policing is a method of law enforcement that is prone to racial profiling, since it allows officers to stop civilians and search them for weapons or other illegal possessions without adequately justifying why. Chapter 7. "June 26, 2011 / In Memory of James Craig Anderson," the third poem, puts together an image of a pickup truck that, through juxtaposition, creates a black object. (104.) Please provide the paragraph in question. Enjoy this free preview Unlock all 24 pages of this Study Guide by subscribing today. Copyright © 1999 - 2021 GradeSaver LLC. What does she mean by "actual anger"? Symbols & Motifs. Download Save. discuss with reference to Claudia Rankine's Citizen. You ask if he will, but this irritates him. A new seat opens up on the train and the woman who avoided the seat next to the man in question now sits down, prompting the. A black-and-white photo of many white people gathered under the base of a tree features one man in the center who points up at the darkness that is cut off by the photo's edge. In interviews, Rankine says that the stories are collected from a wide range of different people: black, white, male, and female. His ethnicity, however, stems from a region of northern Algeria, whence many French people hail. Rankine is a great poet, her manipulation of language is amazing and the blend of this with modern art throughout the book, makes the book to be both an amazing read, but beautiful as a physical object too. In a script for a “situation video,” readers are presented by a number of quotes from CNN coverage of Hurricane Katrina and how people feel as they wait for help from national relief organizations. But Baldwin goes on to suggest that it is often necessary to make an “adjustment” to this kind of emotional response. He can just feel that this is going to happen. The textbooks taught him these things, but they could not teach him that he would be "walking into a fist punching through the blackness" (90). In this “situation video,” a lawyer who has done nothing wrong is not only treated like a criminal, but dehumanized and humiliated by the police officers who force him to strip naked before letting him go. A replica with black men’s faces compliments the picture, but the windows and bars are replaced with fences, barbed wire, and trees. The next photos show a pattern of close-up shots of white men and bars on windows and generally being enclosed. Suduiko, Aaron ed. This is also the only poem told in the second person in this section. Even where borders seem to have been broken down, the traces remain. This time, the protagonist focuses not on her own mistreatment, but on the glaring assumptions her fellow passengers have made about the man sitting next to the empty seat. In the following poem about the Jena Six, Rankine illustrates the deeply racist and threatening provocation of nooses appearing in a tree on a high-school campus. Another man knows he will be pulled over, and prepares with an opened briefcase on the passenger seat and the word yes rolling about his tongue. Consequently, these recordings document the last moments of Trayvon Martin’s life, meaning that they are “the call[s] of good-byes.” The picture included at the end of this “situation script” is also worth paying attention to, since it’s a famous photograph of a public lynching that took place in Indiana during the Jim Crow Era. You still are "not the guy and still you fit the description" (98). The killing of Mark Duggan was not caught on tape, and a male colleague asks the narrator if she will write about it. The aggregate of these quotations are the unmistakable difficulty of reproaching loaded words of racism with unimaginable equal force day in and day out. This is also the section most heavily criticized because of its attempts to tie politics, a highly fact-driven field, into poetry, a highly emotion-driven field. It was published in 2014 and won several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, LA Times Book Prize for Poetry, PEN Open Book Award. In a script for a “situation video” about the 2006 soccer World Cup, a number of quotes appear by writers and thinkers like. These organizations take an extremely long time to come to certain communities, leaving people wading through water. Citizen: An American Lyric essays are academic essays for citation. However, her decision to sit next to him turns into something meaningful when he turns to look at her, making it clear that he sees her kindness as an act of solidarity, not one of pity. Baldwin seems cognizant of this dynamic, which is why he upholds that black people must at least try to find ways to keep themselves from “smash[ing]” the white people who treat them so poorly. The UK media covered the Rodney King-LA riots differently than the US. LitCharts Teacher Editions. After all, perhaps the man doesn’t need her reassurance that he is worth sitting next to—maybe he, unlike her, is able to discount what racist people think of him. The narrator is on the phone with her brother, continuing to talk though he has all but hung up the phone. Don't Let Me Be Lonely, part one (10:27): MP3 This section dips into figuration and abstraction, but readers might intuit that the speaker (who is most likely Trayvon Martin himself) is referring to the fact that the incident that unfolded between Trayvon Martin and the neighborhood watchman who killed him was picked up in the background of several telephone calls that neighbors placed to the police. Citizen is the winner of numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry, and the PEN Open Book Award. As they tie the noose, they think that this experience is how they will “learn the ropes.” Next, the focus shifts to a high school party, where several boys beat another boy, smashing a beer bottle and throwing his body against a concrete floor as he bleeds out of his ears. In this way, it becomes clear that visibility doesn’t necessarily lead to beneficial kinds of recognition. A black and blue 3-photo album appears next. Note that Rankine refers to the Situation series as “video essays” on her website. This, in turn, causes the protagonist to question why someone would ever feel disconnected from this kind of tragedy, since any human should be able to understand this sorrow and anger. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. 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