Join us for an “It’s Time to Talk” book club discussion of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.
WHEN: Mondays, July 9 & 30, 2018
TIME: 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Cleveland Public Library, Literature Department, 2nd FL
It’s Time to Talk discussion groups offer a unique experience for those willing to engage in conversations around the complex issues of race and social justice. The intent is to get people talking and listening to one another in a way that will lead to greater understanding. To help facilitate the discussion, there is an It’s Time to Talk book club conversation guidelines, developed by the YWCA of Greater Cleveland. These can be difficult conversations, but the need is critical. To paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt: Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Download/print the Book Club Conversation Guidelines for Citizen HERE.
About the Book: Published in 2014, Citizen: An American Lyric is a book of work of poetry, prose, and visual images that recounts mounting racial microaggressions encountered in everyday activities, in life and in the media. To date, Citizen is the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Awards: Winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry; Winner of the 2015 PEN Open Book Award; Winner of the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry; Winner of the 2015 NAACP Image Award; 2015 Forward Prize for Poetry. Honors: Finalist for the 2014 National Book Award in Poetry; Finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Page count: 159. Genres: Poetry, Essays
About the Author: Claudia Rankine received a B.A. in English from Williams College and a M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. She is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. She also co-produces a video series, “The Situation,” alongside John Lucas, and is the founder of the Open Letter Project: Race and the Creative Imagination. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Yale University where she is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry in the departments of African American Studies and English.
(Adapted from claudiarankine.com)