Claudia Rankine on Citizen: An American Lyric - 2015 L.A. Times Festival of Books

Rich Fahle interviews author Claudia Rankine about her latest book, “Citizen: An American Lyric.” FROM THE PUBLISHER: Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly 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,Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race” society. Watch more interviews here:    • 2015 L.A. Times Festival of Books