Essay 3: ​Citizen ​Essay

● Length: 5 pages
● Final Draft Due: on Turnitin, Tuesday, Mar. 3/15, by 11:59 PM

Articulate what you the most thoughtful and meaningful question you had while reading ​Citizen​,
and then pose it as a problem. The rest of the paper should attempt to provide a clear answer to
this question in the opener and to provide persuasive evidence to defend the view that you take
in the middle. Remember, you want to try to show the reader a) that your question is meaningful
and b) that the particular answer or interpretation you are providing to a complex, ambiguous
and debatable question is an especially good response.

Also remember three other things we’ve talked about from Trimble’s chapters on “Openers” and
“Middles”:
● The importance of a “front-door approach” in your opener.
● In the middle of your essay, make sure that you create a clear strategy for explaining the
view that you have taken in your opener. Make sure to emphasize continuity between
the topic sentences of your body paragraphs.
● Be concrete. Readers much prefer to learn about concrete facts rather than hear
abstractions. You should analyze a specific image, symbol, word, motif, etc. rather than
to try to talk about the book as a whole.

Although I’d like for you to come up with your own question in your own words here are several
sample questions adapted from Graywolf Press’s discussion guide to get you started:
1. Select two of the visual artworks reproduced in Citizen, and consider what they add to
the text. What questions or feelings do the artworks provoke? How would the text read
without them? What do the book’s visual components articulate or represent that
language doesn’t embody?

2. What does this kind of close attention to the human body have to do with race and
racism? How has your perception of bodies, of the way bodies physically occupy space,
shifted after reading ​Citizen​?

3. Citizen​’s discussion of Serena and Venus Williams includes the Zora Neale Hurston
quote, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” How
does this quote relate to ​Citizen ​as a whole?

4. Referring to Serena Williams, Rankine states, “Yes, and the body has memory. The
physical carriage hauls more than its weight.” How do sports in particular encourage
spectators and officials to assume influence or even ownership over the bodies of the
players? Does this have parallels to other arenas of American life?
5. How does ​Citizen ​portray and address the privileged position of white Americans? How
does Rankine also show the effects of a racist system ​on ​those white Americans?

6. Claudia Rankine uses ​Citizen ​to explore how and why language feels hurtful. On page
49, she provides a possible answer, given by philosopher Judith Butler, for why
language can hurt. Consider the variety of expressions of hurt in Citizen. How do the
book’s many speakers express hurt in language? How do the book’s visual components
communicate hurt? Finally, how does the body express hurt, in ​Citizen​, in response to
the many slights of language that it endures?