Identity Issues In Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

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Identity and its underlying issues have existed for countless years without having been critically discussed and analyzed. However, in a current age that is becoming increasingly aware of political correctness and normalizing taboo subjects, identity issues have become a polarizing topic. Claudia Rankine, poet and essayist, has furthered the discussion of identity issues with her book, Citizen: An American Lyric. Rankine’s work describes the unavoidable invisibility that individuals experience, the trouble minorities have with identifying themselves, and the ways in which people question their own identity and character. Although it is impossible for a person to be completely invisible, this impossibility becomes a distorted reality when our …show more content…

Rankine notes the most common way people question their own identity is by asking: Who am I?”. In an example, Rankine depicts a person questioning their identity by analyzing themselves from a third person perspective, “I they he she we you turn only to discover the encounter to be alien to this place… Time opens out to you. The opening, between you and you, occupied, zoned for an encounter, given the histories of you and you – And always, who is this you?” (314-315). Stepping out of one’s self to critique from a distance and asking the thought-provoking question of who you really are allows for an in-depth analysis of one’s character, often needed when individuals inevitably being to feel astray. In the same narrative, Rankine utilizes the example of time and history to explain how people question their own identity and character. Together, time and history are the two culprits of frantically putting identity into question. Time’s ability to allow individuals to reflect on their own history causes a critical auto-evaluation. Rankine examines the ways in which people question their identity through qualitative questioning and by using examples of time and history. Dilemmas with identity is a discussion that will persist in both formal and informal settings. The ability to understand the complexity of identity is crucial for creating an environment in which people will no longer dismiss or overlook others, leading them to question the validity of their identity. An improved social environment is also needed to cease the categorizing, labeling, and generalizing of minority groups, and to understand the different methods of analyzing our own

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