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Citizen: An American Lyric Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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, 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.
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“Allyson Johnson captures every ounce of the pathos and shock contained in the stories of the racial injustice…Johnson’s measured drama and impassioned dialogue interpretations rivet the listener’s attention…Her memorable performance provides auditory texture and impact for the audiobook…The achievement of this audio is how it allows these stories and the author’s powerful perspective to compel more empathy and vigilance about this lingering problem in America. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“The book of the year is Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. It would have been the book of any year…Citizen asks us to change the way we look; we have to believe that that might lead to changing the way we live.”
— New Yorker -
“Rankine brilliantly pushes poetry’s forms to disarm readers and circumvent our carefully constructed defense mechanisms…Citizen throws a Molotov cocktail at the notion that reduction of injustice is the same as freedom.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Part protest lyric, part art book, Citizen is a dazzling expression of the painful double consciousness of black life in America.”
— Washington Post -
“Rankine inspires sympathy and outrage, but most of all a will to take a deep look at ourselves and our society.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“A prism of personal perspectives illuminates [Rankine’s] meditations on race…Powerful.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
Combining poetry, essay, and images from media and contemporary art, Rankine's poetics capture the urgency of her subject matter.
— Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Awards
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Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2015
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A New York Times bestseller
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Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry
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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
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A New York Public Library Staff Pick of Favorite Books of the Last 125 Years
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Winner of the PEN Open Book Award
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A Kirkus Reviews Pick of 10 Books That Challenge Racism
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About Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine is the author of six books, including Just Us, a finalist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellent in nonfiction. Her work has appeared recently in the London Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the winner of the 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize, and a contributing editor of Poets & Writers. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. She is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University
About Allyson Johnson
Allyson Johnson is an actress and singer who began performing at age twelve as coanchor of Bubble Gum Digest, for which she won an Emmy. After earning a degree in psychology from Brown University, she moved to New York where she became a social worker before shifting to a career in television and radio. Johnson has recorded countless commercials, promos, audiobooks, narrations, and animation series.