Citizen cover art

Citizen

An American Lyric

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Citizen

By: Claudia Rankine
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
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About this listen

Claudia Rankine's bold new audiobook recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in 21st-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV - everywhere, all the time. The cumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship.

©2014 Claudia Rankine (P)2015 Tantor African American Essays Poetry Nonfiction

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Critic reviews

"Combining poetry, essay, and images from media and contemporary art, Rankine's poetics capture the urgency of her subject matter." ( Publishers Weekly)
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Rankine has a way with words. a way to make sense of the world we live in as people of colour. an eloquent portrayal of life.

absolutely amazing.

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I loved the way this book was read as if I were there at the time. There was a lot of passion in the voice and I thoroughly enjoyed the style the book was written in.
Maryanne Ayre

Amazing story

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Already ready to read it again 10/10. I would highly recommend this book about race.

Citizen an American Lyric

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loved it but could help but feel sad that people still behave this way and there is no indication that things will be different for my children.

Citizen - very thoughtful

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Took me to get in touch with my feelings buried deep inside.
Where I never seen double standards it is now clear that there are. this is a rollercoster of emotions.
The poem related to Serena Williams 2as the one I loved the most, and how she managed to pull it off by being the best she can be, taking no crap from no one.

Clear perspective of how black people are treated!

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Allyson Johnson’s reading has great clarity but is perhaps a bit passionless and unvaried. It doesn’t really bring out the poetic texture of the rich and complex prose-poem that is ‘Citizen’. And it is not quite unabridged. Page 134 is a kind of memory wall, listing 18 names and 10 (increasingly fading) ‘In Memory’. This recording abridges the names to only four—a crass decision which betrays an entire lack of understanding and empathy with what the text is doing. I enjoyed listening to the recording once but don’t think I’d revisit it.

clear but unvaried performance

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