Citizen: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine

By now you’ve heard the story: a woman goes to a Donald Trump rally, is not impressed by what she hears, and signals her contempt by reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen in view of the cameras—arousing the ire of his more passionate supporters in the process. Primary politics aside, Rankine’s book is a bracing reflection on micro-aggressions, couched within the macro-aggression of American racism. Rankine weaves Hurricane Katrina, the 2006 World Cup, the 2011 London unrest and the killing of Trayvon Martin together with the sobering banality of everyday racism, and the result is essential reading for a glimpse at not-quite-post-racial America.