I have loved Citizen and Just Us by Claudia Rankine, so when at the library I spied a collection of hers that I hadn't read yet, I had to pick it up.

If you have read Rankine before you probably know to expect her poems to be very explicitly in conversation with the racial discourse of the moment. I did not realize until picking this up to start reading that this collection was from 2004. And as the beginning was more personal, I forgot again until around halfway through I turn the page and thre is 9/11 and the War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom and it was all so immediate it felt like stepping back in time.

Like all good poetry, this is about many things at once. At first I thought this collection was about death — partly pondering your own but mostly the strangeness of death that does not directly implicate you. Distant relatives, celebrities, victims of police brutality on the news. Three thousand people in the twin towers. Everyone in th misguided war that followed. But when I turned the last page of poetry and was shocked the collection was over, I realized what it was really about is the shape death gives to life, what life is for, and what we owe each other.

If you HAVEN'T read Rankine before, her poetry is a hybrid of essay and image, complete with extensive endnotes and context. The essay-like form makes it feel very accessible, I think, even if it doesn't look like what you might think poetry "should" look like. This is a lovely collection, but I think if you are new to Rankine I would recommend starting with Citizen.

Recommended to folks whose favorite non-fiction is found in the Social Sciences section. ( )

We're reading this title for Creative Nonfiction. The lyric style makes for lovely read aloud and the added photos make for interesting reader extension.
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This was fine, but the seeds of Citizen are here--and so much has happened since this book has come out, that it just felt dated. Which, obviously, is not the author's fault in any way. I listened to a new (2021) recording I found on Hoopla, and did not realize that the book itself was older. Perhaps a good snapshot in time, but I could not get into that frame of mind while listening--it also felt rather foreboding, knowing what would come after she wrote this book. ( )

Don't let me be lonely is a work that reminded me of the power of particularity in experience and the repetitive instances that can wear down one's soul, particularly from the perspective of a black woman routinely being exposed to racism and violence in public and private spheres. The role of medication, too, as this spine that runs through the book is a poignant reminder of the ways that people try to shore up or manage their pain.

The rating is just for the use of images: I am researching the theory and history of books written with images. (writingwithimages.com)

"Citizen" raises different issues. (The review is elsewhere on this site.) In "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" the use of images seems mnemonic, evidentiary, decorative, offhanded, generic, unformatted, and therefore almost always uninteresting. In order:

1. Mnemonic: the many images of people Rankine describes, such as Abner Louima, Johnny Cochrane, Amadou Diallo (pp. 56-57), are given as reminders.

2. Evidentiary: those images are also evidentiary, in that they point toward the fact that Rankine's entire narrative is about real politics, real history, and -- by implication -- her real reactions. But "evidentiary" might be better applied to photographs that indicate the narrative is telling a true story, for example the mammogram with the lump on p. 8.

(The mismatch between the ferocity of the text and what I think of as the marginalized use of images is echoed, incidentally, in the mismatch between the book's very extensive "Notes" section, which describes most of the book's references at length, and the book's very short "Images" section, which is less than a full page. The cases of Louima, Diallo, and others are documented in "Notes," but often the "Images" file just says "(c) John Lucas," as if there is nothing more to be asked or known about the photographs.)

3. Decorative: this seems an adequate description of some illustrations, such as the still of "The Wild Bunch" on p. 25, which doesn't illustrate the points made in the text.

4. Offhanded: for example the drawings of lips speaking on p. 40, which looks tossed-off, as if Rankine had decided she wanted an image, but not what she wanted out of the image.

5. Generic: for example the Google search bar on p. 72: it accompanies a very specific idea of what might be searched, so its generic nature isn't pertinent -- it's not clear why a reader wants to be reminded of the general idea of a Google search.

6. Unformatted: most of the images in this book seem carelessly placed on the page. Why does the text wrap around the image on p. 82, but not on p. 83? Why are the images narrower than the margins in most cases, but not in all? Why not decide those issues, especially if they might be distracting?

This list could easily be extended. But there points are all symptoms: Rankine cares desperately for her subject matter, and for her images are ornaments, additions, extras, and bits of evidence. They are rarely objects of thought. The narrative rarely needs them, rarely knows what might be done with them. They never guide the narrative. They are almost, but not quite, outside the text's imagination.

(Still there are a few interesting uses of images in the book. I especially appreciate the repetition of the chalkboard marked "THIS IS THE MOST MISERABLE IN MY LIFE," repeated four ties on pp. 17-18, accompanying a narrative about a disastrous change in the person who wrote it.) ( )