Dear Friend,
My first experience with Claudia Rankine was reading Citizen: An American Lyric. In my review for that collection, I wrote, “Rankine’s genius is in the slow building momentum of her work, the kind that meets us where we are at the beginning and builds with us as we take in more, as we press forward despite the discomfort, as we too rage and cry, distraught, in the end. And she ends where perhaps a professor must: with a lesson.”
I remember reading Citizen with a kind of awe, and having a visceral reaction to it, often surprised by its subtlety and always intrigued by its weaving of multiple modes in support of a single narrative. Just Us, too, seems to incorporate poetry and essay and visual media, and perhaps other modes, to express the “American conversation” of its subtitle. I’m looking forward to seeing how these methods work together to communicate her message this time.
To me, the time was right to select a title like this one. I’m returning for the fall semester of a new school year, it’s an election year here in the United States, and for me, autumn, rather than spring, always feels like the season of renewal, and when I, personally, begin to feel the most energized. That said, I don’t want anyone to feel disinvited by the fact that this book speaks to the “American Conversation.” I believe that conversation is important here, and somewhat unique to this nation, but it’s really a conversation that must happen globally.
Publisher’s description: As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history.
Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine’s questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture’s liminal and private spaces–the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth–where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect.
This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend’s explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine’s own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word.
Sometimes wry, often vulnerable, and always prescient, Just Us is Rankine’s most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, being together.
About the author: Claudia Rankine is the author of five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019; as well as numerous video collaborations. Her recent collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind.
In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the 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. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine joined the NYU Creative Writing Program in Fall 2021. She lives in New York. (Claudia Rankine)
Why Contemplative Reading?
Contemplative reading asks us not just what we’re learning about the book in our hands (or ears), but what we’re learning about ourselves through the experience of reading it. The aim is to create deeper awareness of ourselves and understanding of others. It is often described as “holistic,” but also as “heart-knowing.”
Heart-knowing. Doesn’t that sound nice?
The Plan
This book is divided into twenty-one chapters covering 335 pages. I’m going to divide this into four equal parts, posting my responses each Monday. That comes to over 80 pages per week, but I’m hopeful that the structure of the book–blank spaces, images, etc.–means the breakdown won’t be as challenging as it sounds.
- September 9: “what if” through “outstretched”
- September 16: “daughter” through “social contract”
- September 23: “sound and fury” through “jose marti”
- September 30: “boys will be boys” through “liminal spaces”
Reading & Responding
Each set of reading will guide my responses here on the blog and on social media. I will sometimes share the most provocative line or passage, and what it makes me think about. Other times, I’ll ask questions about the reading, things I’m wondering about or confused about. And still further, I might compare what I’m reading to what it reminds me of from other readings or experiences. I don’t want to give too much guidance about how to read, except to say, read attentively, read slowly, and listen to yourself. What thoughts and feelings arise as you’re reading? Write them down and give yourself some moments to reflect on why you’re thinking what you’re thinking, or why you’re feeling what you’re feeling.
I encourage you to join these conversations and leave your thoughts in the blog comments or on your socials. On social media, please use #theCRPblog.
Meditation
“Words work as release–well-oiled doors opening and closing between intention, gesture.” -Claudia Rankine
May you be at ease,
~Adam
Contemplative Reading Project 
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