However, what separates Rankine from other authors is her ability to articulate the weight of glances and offhand remarks that people of colour hear every day. She delves into the ways in which Black people are perceived and judged, regardless of how they may try to appeal to the white gaze. Rankine draws on pop culture, street names, real experiences of Black citizens, and police brutality to weave together themes of race and racialization. Her words inspired me as a poet, informed me as an ally, and changed me as a reader. There’s an overwhelming feeling in the collection of taking up too much space-of being too visible and invisible all at once. Her volume, Citizen: An American Lyric, is a book-length poem which illuminates the uncomfortable reality of Black citizens’ everyday lives. GradeSaver, 15 August 2016 Web.Claudia Rankine’s voice is nothing short of transformational. 'Citizen: An American Lyric Study Guide'. Move on.' As Rankine's brilliant, disabusing work, always aware of its ironies, reminds us, 'moving on' is not synonymous with 'leaving behind.'' Writing for The Washington Post, Michael Lindgren described the book as 'Part protest lyric, part art book, Citizen is a dazzling expression of the painful double consciousness of black life in America.' Next Section Citizen: An American Lyric Summary Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Johanning, Cameron. Dan Chiasson of The New Yorker wrote that ' is an especially vital book for this moment in time.The realization at the end of this book sits heavily upon the heart: 'This is how you are a citizen,' Rankine writes.

It was also named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and was cited as a major achievement when Rankine received Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize.

Met with wide praise, the book received the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the 2015 PEN Open Book Award. The book has been described as both criticism and poetry critic Michael Lindgren says the book 'boundary-bending potency' and is 'an innovative amalgam of genres.' The book can function as both a poetic work and a political work, a meditation on both activism and literary aesthetics.

Citizen: An American Lyric was published in 2014 by American poet Claudia Rankine, and remains a timely, even urgent meditation on race, violence, racism, art, and mediation.

Claudia rankine an american lyric