claudia rankine's citizen an american lyric

In “A Poetics of American Citizenship: Blackness, Injury, and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen,” Joel Schlosser proposes that citizenship should be thought of through the metaphor of injury, to better account for the experiences of minorities who face microaggression (3). Thinking of microaggressions as an ever-present “ache” that has been accepted, or “grown into” shows their prevalence and resulting connection to life in America, and citizenship, for minorities.

Following this description Rankine writes, “…and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. The accumulation of these harmful experiences results in an ever-present “ache,” a “sigh” that’s “no longer audible” because “ou’ve grown into it” (Rankine 151). We are both challenging Schlosser for leaving out a discussion of microaggression and add to his claim by analyzing microaggression alongside a conception of citizenship as injury.Ĭlaudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) compiles instances of microaggression to communicate the damage they cause. We discuss the ways microaggression is closely linked to citizenship and injury. However, Schlosser places microaggression itself in the background of the discussion. In this paper we discuss a conception of citizenship as injury, which is put forth by Joel Schlosser in “A Poetics of American Citizenship: Blackness, Injury, and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.” Schlosser explains that Claudia Rankine’s Citizen presents a view of African American citizenship as being characterized by injury as a result of racism.

Claudia rankine's citizen an american lyric