The Thursday Book Beat: Rankine’s "Citizen" Gets Sales Boost Thanks to Trump Rally

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric Gets Sales Boost Thanks to Trump Rally

Twenty-three year-old Johari Osayi Idusuyi was reading the critically acclaimed book of poetry at a Trump rally and caused it to soar #21 from #646 on Amazon. She explained that she had no intention of doing that when she was invited to attend the rally with her friends but after the treatment of protesters present, she decided some reading was in order. Here’s a synopsis of the book:

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. 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.

A fitting counter to the type of rherotic Donald Trump is spewing out on the campaign trail. This Canadian plans on picking up Rankine’s book which sounds fantastic. Check out the video for Johari Osayi Idusuyi’s interview.