Keywords
spatial theory, spatial injustice, geography, language, racism, African American, black body, white body
Abstract
In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine addresses topics from segregation to police brutality to indicate the extreme spatial relationships between racial groups. Her work reveals the geographic mechanisms that confine African Americans to certain locations as well as the coerce them to violently share space with their white counterparts. Drawing upon spatial theory, which exposes the structures of unjust geography, my analysis also considers language as an additional spatial force that harms the black community as much as more physical phenomena.
Issue and Volume
14.2
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Jenson, Thomas
(2022)
"Racial Spatial Relationships in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen,"
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 14:
Iss.
2, Article 7.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol14/iss2/7
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Modern Literature Commons