News
Citizen author Claudia Rankine gives powerful lecture on race and imagery
By Noelle Connors ’19
February 11, 2016
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This Monday, Feb. 8, Claudia Rankine, award-winning author of the 2014 book Citizen, An American Lyric, visited campus to give an enlightening discussion and reading of her work and the circumstances surrounding it. The book brings the discussion of race to the level of individuals.
It is not only an argument against police brutality and systematic injustice, but an argument against everyday actions which many just ignore, or otherwise do not see as a problem. Citizen is a compilation of poetry, prose and images, and Rankine’s lecture followed a similar format.
The Chapel was filled for the highly anticipated reading. After an introduction by Professor of Creative Writing Naomi Guttman, Rankine discussed the images within Citizen. She read from the book, added stories and details and showed powerful videos which addressed similar issues. Rankine began by discussing the significance of the hoodie on the book’s cover, a 1993 work by David Himmons entitled “In the Hood.”
She chose a hoodie specifically because “we all own one, or we all could own one.” However, the hoodie also represents the criminalization of black people, especially black men, and the executioner’s hood worn by people such as those in the KKK. The hoodie, like many other images in her book, represents the daily microaggressions people of color face in America, and draws attention to the effects of these injustices.
Discussing a photo in the book of a suburban intersection at a street called Jim Crow Rd., Rankine said, “We don’t think about the way we segregate our lives. You never see people who don’t look like you inside your house.” Throughout her discussion, Rankine utilized not only images but videos as well.
“It was very powerful, especially with the combination of her reading parts of her book out loud, the pictures on the slide shows and the short films [she] and her husband made. All of these things combined to make this an emotional and personal experience for me,” Eva Lynch-Comer ’19 said.
Rankine showed two emotionally charged films, a collage of surveillance videos of recent police brutality, and a film detailing society’s ideas about whiteness.
These striking films caused audience members to question beliefs in what is ordinary, and even beneficial to society, such as trusting our neighbors and looking out for each other. After hearing the day to day injustices people of color face in America, these videos were in shocking contrast to that which is typically believed (in part) because they emphasized how major the problem is. It is a problem that people of color face everyday, and it does not just cause small problems; it endangers lives.
“It is such difficult material, really difficult for her to read and really difficult for us as an audience to hear, but at no point did it become unbearably depressing,” Rachel Alatalo ’18 told The Spectator. “She managed to strike a really graceful balance.”
One of Rankine’s main messages in both her poetry and discussion was that “we are in the habit of doing the next thing.” By this, Rankine means that when we observe microagressions or other injustices in our daily lives, we do not stop to address them, but continue about our lives for fear of making the situation uncomfortable.
“We are so unwilling to make our spaces uncomfortable that we will take it and take it again,” Rankine said.
To continue this point, Rankine described that the image she chose to represent black people in America was that of a fearful deer. She chose this representation because deer are frightened when people come close and have to be constantly vigilant.
Rankine urged the audience to acknowledge this tendency, and to recognize how often we just move on to the next thing. In response to a question at the end of her talk, Rankine reflected on her reasons for choosing to write in the second person.
She described her reasons for not using the first person saying, “I didn’t want to imply that it was my life, that I could change it by moving from California to Chicago.”
Instead, she wanted it to be read as a collection of stories. Furthermore, she was drawn to second person as she felt that it inserted her reader into the story.
She addressed the fact that many readers believe that “we are beyond racism now,” but she wanted to force the reader to experience life from these other perspectives so that the presence of racism is undeniable, and so that the reader can feel the pain experienced by people in these terrible situations.
Rankine also described how she didn’t want it to be a collection of her stories, but of ordinary people’s stories, so she interviewed her friends. Rankine wanted Citizen to be a story not of the extraordinary, but of the ordinary, where people at the grocery store, a friends’ house or buying breakfast are reduced to their race.
“It was disheartening and heartbreaking but at least these conversations are being had, and through her book, Claudia Rankine is making the severity of the issue of racism in America known,” Lynch-Comer said.
“I thought she showed a lot of control over both her material and her audience,” Collin Spinney ’16 said. “She provided some really intimate background information, which was great because so often writers just come and tell us what we already know about the book.”
Through Rankine’s enlightening talk, students, faculty and community members gained valuable insight into the ordinary injustices of life for people of color living in America and received an opportunity to hear moving poetry and learn from images and videos.