Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

Citizen

byClaudia Rankine

An American Lyric

Format:

PaperbackEbook

Buy the book from:

AmazonOpens in a new tabBlackwellsOpens in a new tabBookshop.orgOpens in a new tabFoylesOpens in a new tabHiveOpens in a new tabWaterstonesOpens in a new tabWHSmithOpens in a new tab
In this moving, critical and fiercely intelligent collection of prose poems, Claudia Rankine examines the experience of race and racism in Western society through sharp vignettes of everyday discrimination and prejudice, and longer meditations on the violence - whether linguistic or physical - which has impacted the lives of Serena Williams, Zinedine Zidane, Mark Duggan and others.

Awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in America after becoming the first book in the prize's history to be a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories, Citizen weaves essays, images and poetry together to form a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our ostensibly "post-race" society.

Wonderfully capacious and innovative. In her riffs on the demotic, in her layering of incident, Rankine finds a new way of writing about race in America

Nick Laird, New York Review of Books

About Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist and playwright; her numerous works include the ground-breaking American Lyric trilogy, Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004), Citizen (2014) and Just Us (2020). A chancellor emerita of the Academy of American Poets, she is recipient of many honours including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Forward Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. She is a professor of creative writing at New York University, and has previously taught at Pomona College and Yale University.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780141981772
  • Length: 176 pages
  • Dimensions: 198mm x 15mm x 128mm
  • Weight: 285g
  • Price: £10.99
All editions