Citizen: An American Lyric

The final chapter of Citizen is written again in the second-person perspective. However, in this chapter, the identity of the subject is ambiguous and shifts throughout the chapter.

Rankine explores disassociation from the self in this section. Though many of Rankine’s prose poems occupy only the top half of the page, as a block paragraph, the text of Chapter 7 takes up the entire page. The text floats down the page, as the narrator describes a feeling of serene detachment from their own existence: “Some years there exists a wanting to escape— / you, floating above your certain ache— / still the ache coexists. / Call that the immanent you— / You are you even before you/grow into understand you / are not anyone, worthless, / not worth you” (139). Rankine describes floating, feelings of worthlessness, and listlessness.

Chapter 7 also touches on invisibility and feelings of worthlessness in the black community. Rankine suggests that black people are rendered as less-than from childhood: "You are you even before you / grow into understanding you / are not anyone, worthless” (139). The next scene focuses on white privilege by recounting an