Citizen: An American Lyric Lesson Plan

Rankine says in an interview that Citizen is about intimacy. What evidence do you see of this so far in the book?

In order to answer this question, students should look at points of contact within the text. There is a kind of intimate relationship between white people and people of color when acts of racism occur. It is through this weird and painful interaction that Black people are both seen and unseen (invisible and hypervisible). Students may point to particular instances that resonated with them, like the neighbor who mistakes the man for a burglar and the woman who sits by the Black man on the train, as instances of intimacy.

What is the function of all the...