Follow the link below for the full transcript.
Poet and playwright Claudia Rankine says that the small moments that carve gaps of misunderstanding between Americans lead to big, national moments of misunderstanding, like events in Ferguson and New York. Rankine explores these disruptions and how they lead to conflict in her new book, “Citizen.”
GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight: personal reflections on the recent upheaval involving black men and white police officers in New York, Ferguson, Cleveland, and beyond.
They come from poet and playwright Claudia Rankine. Her book “Citizen” was a finalist for the National Book Award.
CLAUDIA RANKINE, Poet: I’m Claudia Rankine, a poet, playwright. I also teach at Pomona College.
I see myself as a citizen, walking around, collecting stories, and using those stories to reflect our lives through poetry, through essays, creating these hybrid texts and plays that reflect back to us who we are.
In my most recent book, “Citizen,” I wanted to try to track the moments that disrupt interactions, especially between people of different races. The book contains two kinds of aggressions, what is commonly known as microaggressions, the small moments that I referred to.
But then I wanted to begin to understand how we get these major moments, the murders of black men, these kind of moments in 2014 where you think, how did that happen?
And I wanted to track it back and say, well, if people in their daily lives begin by believing and saying these small things, they will add up to major, major aggressions against people just because of the color of their skin. And so the book tracks the small to the large.
Click here for more information.
Links:
