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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 accumulative 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. In essay, image, and poetry, \u003ci\u003eCitizen\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named \"post-race\" society.","brand":"Claudia Rankine","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793359274026,"sku":"9781555976903","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/citizen-an-american-lyric-9516856.jpg?v=1762149825"},{"product_id":"dont-let-me-be-lonely-an-american-lyric","title":"Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric","description":"\u003cp\u003eA brilliant and unsparing examination of America in the early twenty-first century, Claudia Rankine's \u003ci\u003eDon't Let Me Be Lonely\u003c\/i\u003e invents a new genre to confront the particular loneliness and rapacious assault on selfhood that our media have inflicted upon our lives. Fusing the lyric, the essay, and the visual, Rankine negotiates the enduring anxieties of medicated depression, race riots, divisive elections, terrorist attacks, and ongoing wars--doom scrolling through the daily news feeds that keep us glued to our screens and that have come to define our age. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFirst published in 2004, \u003ci\u003eDon't Let Me Be Lonely\u003c\/i\u003e is a hauntingly prescient work, one that has secured a permanent place in American literature. 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Centered on a heroine named Jane, these poems-obsessive, intrepid, erotic--speak in the aftermath of a life-altering tragedy, attempting to make peace with loss and find redemption through mourning. Rankine writes with unflinching attention to exterior detail and emotional nuance, as well as with linguistic and formal innovation, crafting an extraordinarily powerful, utterly unique portrait of sorrow and strength.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on voices from Jane Eyre to Lady MacBeth, Rankine welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque, courting paradox into the center of her voice. Whether writing about intimacy or alienation, what remains long after, in searing echo, is this voice--its beguiling cadence and vivid physicality. There is an unprotected quality to this writing, as if each word has been pushed out along the precipice, daring us to go with it. 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