Claudia Rankine: Citizen

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, on view at the MCA Chicago November 7, 2026 to April 25, 2027

• A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the 21st Century
• Finalist for the 2014 National Book Award in Poetry
• Winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
• Finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism
• Winner of the 2015 PEN Open Book Award
• Winner of the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry
• A Kirkus Best Book for the 21st Century (So Far)
• An Atlantic Best American Poetry Collection of the 21st Century
• A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years

Claudia Rankine’s bold book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV—everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race” society.

Explore the full collection here.