CLAUDIA

RANKINE
b. 1963

Yes, and this is how you are a citizen:

Come on. Let it go. Move on.
(Citizen, p. 151)

The world is wrong. You cant put the past

behind you. Its buried in you; its turned your
flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything
remembered is useful but it all comes from
the world to be stored in you. Who did what
to whom on which day? Who said that? She
said what? What did he just do? Did she
really just say that?

(Citizen, p. 63)

themes
Injury, insult + the body
Invisibility / hypervisibility
Language + (mis)understanding
Continuum of past + present

Its just this, youre injured.

Nobody notices, only youve known,
youre not sick, not crazy,
not angry, not sad
Its just this, youre injured.

(Citizen, p. 145)

historical self vs. self self

sometimes your historical selves, her white self and
your black self, or your white self and her black self,
arrive with the full force of your American positioning.
Then you are standing face-to-face in seconds that
wipe the affable smiles right from your mouths. What
did you say? Instantaneously your attachment seems
fragile, tenuous, subject to any transgression of your
historical self. And though your joined personal
histories are supposed to save you from
misunderstandings, they usually cause you to
understand all too well what is meant.

(Citizen, p. 14)