Claudia Rankine is a writer, poet, dramatist, and anthology editor from the United States of America. The author published five collections of poems, two plays, and several articles. The two works of hers that were proposed for the analysis are Citizen: An American Lyric and the poem Stop and Frisk. With the help of writing, Claudia Rankine demonstrates the unfair and unstable community atmosphere, where unfriendly relationships prevail.
Both compositions include the illustration of discrimination and racist acts in society. To my mind, Rankine included a considerable number of racist encounters into a single chapter of the Citizen: An American Lyric. Memories are conveyed from a second-person perspective, and the author, in some sense, invites the reader to become the main witness. The whole work describes the unintentional aggression and negative attitude that people experienced throughout various occasions. In the second poem, which is named Stop and Frisk, Rankine emphasizes the criminal aspects that influence the life of African American individuals. In my opinion, she evaluates the actions of police officers, which are not always objective, fair, and legal. It is possible to notice in the poem the illustration of the work of the police that firstly aims not at solving the case and detecting the culprit. By contrast, it strives to choose the person that is similar to the determined characteristics and fits the appropriate description. The compositions portray veritable life situations and conditions, which African Americans have to endure in the United States of America community.
In conclusion, the author attempted to show the real attitude to people who have distinctions in comparison with others. Discrimination and race issues became the basis of the plots and were generally centralized. Moreover, Rankine depicted negative attitudes via personal experience and situations that occurred in the lives of other individuals. In particular, the sense of the poems addresses the problems of not objective police actions and obnoxious conversations that involve racial discussions.