2018 #2: Citzen: An American Lyric (Rankine)

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't think anything I write here will adequately convey the torrent of feelings and thoughts that are stirring inside me. This is art. This is truth. This is pain.

Rankine quotes James Baldwin: "The purpose of art...is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers." (115) Indeed, this is an essay about answers. Answers fueled by imagination. And while that sounds grand and we usually consider imagination a positive trait, consider these three lines:

because white men can't
police their imagination
black people are dying

If that bothers you, don't read this book. No, on the other hand, read this book. Read about what it is to be invisible. To be unheard. It is an essaypoem on past, present, and future...understanding that the triumvirate we use to keep time manageable is really just a construct that fails to acknowledge our own responsibility to those three aspects of our existence.

"Memory is a tough place," Rankine writes. "You were there. If this is not the truth, it is also not a lie." (64)

Speaking truth to power is what Rankine does here. A colleague described this as a "quick read." It is not. It is a book that deserves deep attention to every word--not just the words themselves, but to see how Rankine has crafted her thoughts and bared them for all to see. This is an honest and important essay that casts our condition as citizens into high relief. It isn't pretty, but the song needs to be heard and the story needs to be told, until we all learn how to listen.

2018 #1: The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen)

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book will sit with me for a long time. As someone who studies the Cold War—that “experiment they call, with a straight face, the Cold War” (344)—I responded to this book both academically and personally.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s nuance is masterful—his pro-antagonist, if you will, is one of the more interesting characterizations I’ve come across in recent literature. While there are brief moments of heavy-handedness, most of the book is filled with stunning language, vivid imagery, and beautifully-crafted moments of sardonic humor.

This is the hero’s journey with a twist. As Nguyen said recently at a talk at Radcliffe, revolutions often lead to disillusionment, but that doesn’t mean they fail and can’t continue (paraphrase). In some sense, Nguyen highlights the sense of the word “revolution” as it appears in physics and makes a compelling case that we are often our own axis for that revolution—something I think the main character comes to understand.

This is an important book to read for multiple reasons, but specifically to understand, at least in some way, the many angles of being a refugee. While a spy, the nameless narrator is also a refugee, and Nguyen peels back the multiple layers of that relationship.