CITIZEN: SMALL GROUP “INTERPRETIVE PROBLEMS”

  1. Why does Rankine use second-person narration in Citizen?
  2. How does Rankine’s depiction of Serena Williams relate to the book’s broader engagement with themes of American racism?
  3. What effect does Rankine create by making a poem about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina out of copy-and-pasted quotes from CNN?
  4. Why does Rankine repeat so many phrases, sometimes with small variations, in the poem “Stop and Frisk?”
  5. What does Rankine mean by the distinction between “invisibility” and “hypervisibility”?

Answer in the form of an “abstract”—that is, include both your answer to the question (ie., your thesis) and a quick summary of your reading of the text that supports your answer.

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