Writers Who Inspire Us: The Mixed-Media Storytelling of Claudia Rankine
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I first read Claudia Rankine's prose-poetry book Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) in autumn of 2019 as part of my English Literature with Creative Writing degree. I found it to be an incredible piece of experimental writing, one which I believe should be essential reading for anyone looking to examine institutionalised and societal racism, and to learn more about the craft of writing in experimental forms.
Citizen mixes elements of poetry with longer forms of prose writing, exploring aspects of identity for black Americans. Rankine zooms in on micro-aggressions, specific moments of racism that are a part of her everyday lived experience, and then also examines macro-aggressions, including historical and modern instances of hate crimes. As well as this, Rankine weaves in other media, including images, artworks, and transcripts from her own short films. In this sense, Citizen becomes a mixed-media archive dedicated to exploring what life is like for black Americans. It takes on the overall feeling of a museum exhibition, which becomes especially poignant when one considers the fact that all too frequently black people have been deliberately erased from studies of history. Because of this, I find it to be incredibly inspiring to see how Rankine has deliberately structured her writing and the media that she combines with it to further explore racism in America; her book becomes more than just a book, but also an archive, a gallery, a museum. She uses her writing to move beyond words, to show how racism itself moves beyond that which can be easily explained.
Rankine is a Jamaican-born poet and essayist who moved to America when she was a child, and she speaks of the natural curiosity that she has grown up with as a first-generation immigrant to America. In an interview with the Guardian, she says “I think the way I am in this world is one of the immigrants, someone who has come from another place, understands that there are new rules and in order to negotiate one needs to know, learn, be curious about why people are doing what they’re doing.”
In her writing, she deeply interrogates the racism that is rooted in American culture and institutions. Because of this, Rankine is a writer that definitely inspires me to unpack my own white privilege: "White people think when I say white privilege I mean economic privilege but I mean white living. The ability to stay alive." When asked about how she feels in relation to the way in which people of colour are conditioned to seek white approval, Rankine says: "If I wanted their approval I would do something different. I’m trying to be accountable to myself and the process and the history and the language the best I know how" (the same Guardian interview as cited above). I really admire the fact that Rankine is such an unapologetic voice within the current anti-racism movement; in her writing, she often describes conversations that she has had with white people who are often well-meaning but misguided (or sometimes simply bigoted), and in these interactions she challenges people where they need to be challenged (and where she is capable of challenging them). As a result, I believe that Rankine's writing should be essential reading for anyone wanting to learn more about all the different forms of racism that our world has been built upon.
Subsequently, Rankine is an author who definitely inspires me. I frequently find myself remembering passages of Citizen that have stuck with me particularly vividly; it is one of those books which will take up residence in your head and won't leave. And that, to me, is a sign of something truly powerful.
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Recommended Reading
Citizen: An American Lyric
This is the book that inspired this whole article for me, so it is at the very top of my list for anyone wanting to learn more about Claudia Rankine's writing.
Just Us
Released recently in September 2020, 'Just Us' is on my own personal list of books that I want to read - so join me in reading this mixture of essay and poetry opening up the discussion around white supremacy.
Interviews
This is a very interesting interview that Rankine did with Afua Hirsch for The Guardian, and she discusses her own experiences seeing white privilege play out, and how she explores this in her work.
This interview by Steven W. Thrasher for The Guardian catches up with Rankine after she won the MacArthur grant, and it explores how she will be donating it to the Racial Imaginary Institute
About Sally Piper
Sally Piper is an undergraduate English Literature with Creative Writing student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She has been recognised in a variety of national writing competitions, including being the winner of the 2018 Goldsmiths’ Young Writer Prize, and being shortlisted for the 2020 Chester Cathedral Young Poets’ Competition and the 2020 Stories of the Nature of Cities prize. She enjoys writing fiction with a focus on gender and sexuality.
