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California Book Club: Claudia Rankine

"Citizen" author Claudia Rankine sits down for a conversation with CBC host John Freeman.

Rankine’s book-length work, subtitled "An American Lyric," combines poetry and politics, essay and image, to create a searing inquiry into race in present-day America. At its heart is the intention to invoke in language all the ways trauma takes up residence in the body, amounting to a physical, as well as psychological or emotional, assault. Rankine achieves this by moving from the personal to the public, beginning with small, offhanded “microaggressions” before shifting to a more broadly defined territory of collective loss. Among other subjects, Rankine offers pointed meditations on Hurricane Katrina and the killings of young Black men such as Mark Duggan and Trayvon Martin. The result is a tour de force of both form and content, a book that resonates with fierce intensity.

Apr 20, 2023 05:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)