Basic Information : Synopsis : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : References
Basic Information:
Author:
Claudia Rankine
Edition:
ePub on Libby from Fresno County Public Library
Publisher:
Graywolf Press
ISBN:
1555976905 (ISBN13: 9781555976903)
Start
Date: May 30, 2020
Read
Date: June 14, 2020
169
pages
Genre:
Short Stories, Essay, Interracial Understanding, Poetry
Language
Warning: Low
Rated
Overall: not rated-See Evaluation
Synopsis:
Seven
parts (stanzas?). Not sure how to categorize each part. See
Wikipedia
for a Summary of parts.
Expectations:
- When: May 29, 2020
- Date Became Aware of Book: January 2020-The Big Fresno Read
- How come do I want to read this book: Because of the current times where there is heightened racial tensions. Originally this book was part of the Fresno BigRead before it got canceled due to the pandemic. Paul Swearingen noted we need to understand how to communicate with each other,
- What do I think I will get out of it? Better understanding of a different view of our common world.
Thoughts:
I
Rankine
describes being in a class where she and the person who sits behind
her usually have test results almost identical. She wonders why the
teacher does not notice. She wonders, is it because she does not see
them?
And
then she has an interview for a job, at a college I think. The
interviewer notes to her that his
dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many
great writers out there.
This has so many issues with it. First, Rankine must wonder, what is
she, chopped liver? Second, the dean implies there are no blacks who
can write. Third, he would not be looking at her as an applicant no
matter how wonderful she was if he was not forced to.
Gary’s
note: One of the things I wonder about with affirmative action is
what is the criteria to say that affirmative action has achieved its
goals and now is no longer needed. Until that time, there will always
be a stigma attached to hiring a person of color. Could they not make
it on their own merits? But when you read the above statement, you
realize that color blind hiring has a long way to go in America.
And
then Rankine wonders, what makes the hiring manager think this is an
OK conversation to have? Does he think of her as a non-entity?
John
Henryism-the stress a person puts on themselves to over-achieve,
particularly when they need to show that they are at least as good or
better. This is one of the effects of racism.
Do
joint personal histories give you a better understanding of different
races?
There
are strange-at least to my eyes-pictures throughout the book. More
distracting than something I am pondering.
II
Rainkine
makes a statement which I do not understand-On
the bridge between this sellable anger and “the artist” resides,
at times, an actual anger.
I am not understanding why does this sellable
anger
not reflect real anger? Is she saying that the so-called artist only
produces things to sell? Who will buy this sellable
anger?
Not me for sure.
Apparently
there is a YouTube person, HennessyYoungman (Jayson Musson) with a
series called Art
Thoughtz
who
explores this.
Zora
Neale Hurston:
I
feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
From an essay called How
it Feels To Be Colored Me (1928).
Rankine thinks of Venus and Serena Williams playing tennis in a white
sport in white playing clothes. They sometimes meet officials who
think they do not belong there.
Rankine
makes a statement, rather a phrase, about Serena WIlliams’ response
to a bad call and the Gland Slam Committee’s decision to fine her.
That content
is not meaning.
I am puzzled over this. Froomo Rankine’s viewpoint Williams does
not have control over how her body acts. But does not that make
Williams little more than a machine? I can understand Williams losing
her “cool” when a series of unjust calls is made against her. But
to say that besides a momentary breakdown like that, that Williams
is only response seems to be demeaning.
What
does Youngman mean that when a black paints a flower, it
becomes a slavery flower, flower de Amistad.
I know that Amistad was a slave ship which revolted. Still why is a
work by a black not their own but a work of slavery?
Youngman’s
thought: the
less that is communicated the better. I
do not think this is particularly a black truism. GK Chesterton noted
that he felt that he could not respect a person who revealed
everything about themselves.
III
She
starts this part with a friend, implicitly white, or at least not one
who usually speaks like a black, saying you
nappy-headed ho.
This was not expected from this person and it was a bit disorienting.
What does Rankine mean that incoherence
feels violent?
The one possibility is that maybe her friend is trying to enter into
her world and Rankine cannot accept that? Sort of sounds like Rankine
wants to put up barriers from other races understanding her.
She
seems to put an edge on everything. When she comes past a manager’s
office to sign a form, he blurts out I
didn’t know you were black.
Rather than taking this as an education moment, she leaves it as a
slight on her. I guess if this happens often enough, then you start
to build walls.
Rankin
paraphrases a statement which Judith Butler Our
very being exposes us to the address of another.
Apparently this comes from Butler’s book
Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence/
Another person explains it a bit more: To
be addressed necessarily makes us vulnerable, because it calls for
“emotional openness.”
(Universal
Hubbub)
A bit better. Rankine interprets Butler’s words as racism attempts
to erase you from visibility and as a person. There is also an
attempt to make you hypervisible.
I think she means that to highlight your shortcomings.
There
is a sense that after a while, you ask the question of yourself, What
is wrong with you?
When a clerk wants more security from a black person than the white
person right before them. This gets stuck in your conscience.
IV
A
sigh is the pathway to breathing. She says it allows breathing. I
wonder what kind of a sigh she is talking about? But she also thinks
in the terms of current slavery, at least not a free being.
Rankine
says to forget the past and all of its memories. At least that is
what I think she is saying: No
one should adhere to the facts that contribute to narrative, the
facts that create lives.
I think I disagree with her, but I do not understand why she is
saying this, so I cannot argue with this.
Not
everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be
stored in you.
So goes on to give examples of this happening and this happened and
this happened. Sort of the history book. But what about the things
which create who you are? Or is she not happy with herself and why?
Is it because she feels that her life is somebody else's story and
not her own? Is this how black people feel?
How
can what is not truth be not a lie?
V
I
did not see anything which struck me as being meaningful. Was there?
VI
A
series of vignettes. Looks like they were done in conjunction with
John Lucas (John Lucas is her husband). It is called Situations
and can be found online.
The situations in the book are not in the same order or in some cases
not found onlines.
- August 29, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina.
- June 26, 2011 - James Craig Anderson. See wikipedia about his murder. A man by the name of Dedmon and his gang killed him.
- Baldwin: Skin color cannot be more important than the human being.
-
- You cannot drive yourself sane.
- She relates that to white police officers all blacks look the same, so they fit the description.
- Long Form Birth Certificate
- The length of the silence becoming a living.
-
- The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by answers. James Baldwin. The real quote, which Rankine’s quote is close enough looks like it is: The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides. In Creative America, essay The Creative Process
- She also shares a quote from Dostoyevsky, which says we all have answers. It is the questions we do not know.. I cannot locate this quote. She does not reference Dostoyevsky in her Works Referenced section.
- Interesting-she uses the term executed, which seems very loaded. Versus, even murdered or shot.
- From Wikipedia, it does not sound like things were clean. First, Duggan seems to be involved with people who were not on the right side of the law. But the police looked like they were also trying to cover things up.
- How difficult is it for one body to feel injustice wheeled at another?
-
- What this is about is during the World Cup finals, a player (I think on the French team) turned around and head butted another player. Rankine gives the story behind it. But is it the right story?
- Rankine says that what was said to provoke was Big Algerian shit, dirty terrorist. (She repeats this and uses the n word in other phrases)
- But according to both players the incident was about one player's remark about the other’s sister.
- How does the discrepancies in the story affect Rankine's message? Did the Algerian trash talk the Italian?
- Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. Ralph Ellison
- No one is free.
- This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. While this is useful, aren't you also in danger of reading more into something than what is meant? Such as when a white police officer sees movement and shoots first only to find out that the black is getting his wallet.
- It is the White Man who creates the black man. But it is the black man who creates. I do not understand. Seems rather nonsensical. What meaning does these statements have? Why is White Man capitalized?
- List of the dead
- Because white men cannot police their imagination black people are dying.
- I wonder if she classes anybody who is not black as being white.
VII
Patience
is in the living.
Interesting comment where it seems like most of the poetry turns on
the brimming anger of impatience.
Evaluation:
I
do not think I have enough understanding to rate this book. First,
because I am not one who really does well with poetic works-just ask
me about Shakespeare. Second, the imagery which Rankine presents is
not something which I naturally relate to.
It
is the second reason why I picked this book to read. To gain more
understanding. I do not think I have. When that happens, you ask is
it the author’s fault or the reader’s? I suspect the readers in
this case.
Now
that I have completed my notes-you can see them on my book blog-I
have inched a bit closer in my goal: to understand how a black sees
America. But not enough to really say that I have had an epiphany.
Even the above about how a black
sees America
makes one think that all blacks sees things in the same way. I do
not. And that may be the problem with a book like Citizen,
it wants you to see things through a common black lense. But is
there? I think it might be less clear than Rankine presents.
New Words:
- Code-switch (III): alternate between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation.
- The Alchemy of Race and Rights by Patricia Williams
- She also has an appendix of the works referenced.
Good Quotes:
- First Line: When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows.
- Last Line: It was a lesson
- From my point of view, no label, no slogan, no party, no skin color, and indeed no religion is more important than the human being.. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
- The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.James Baldwin, , Creative America, essay The Creative Process
- How difficult is it for one body to feel injustice wheeled at another? Chp VI
- Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. Ralph Ellison, "Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity" (1953), in The Collected Essays,
- Patience is in the living. Chp VII
References:
- Author's Web Site
- Situations site
- Wikipedia-Book
- Wikipedia-Author
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- New York Times Review
- NPR Review
- The Guardian’s review
- PRI’s The World review
- The New Yorker review
