Just Us
An American Conversation
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
A TLS, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER AND WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION
From award-winning writer Claudia Rankine, the stunning follow-up to Citizen and Don't Let Me Be Lonely
'Riveting' Bernardine Evaristo, TLS (Books of the Year)
'Brilliant' Gary Younge, New Statesman (Books of the Year)
'Timely and powerful' Fatima Bhutto, Financial Times
'One of our time's most incisive, brilliant and necessary intellectuals' Seán Hewitt, Irish Times
'Ranking is a writer of genius' Jeremy Noel-Tod, Sunday Times
At home and in government, contemporary America finds itself riven by a culture war in which aggression and defensiveness alike are on the rise. It is not alone. In such partisan conditions, how can humans best approach one another across our differences?
Taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy as a guiding light, Claudia Rankine explores a series of real encounters with friends and strangers - each disrupting the false comfort of spaces where our public and private lives intersect, like the airport, the theatre, the dinner party and the voting booth - and urges us to enter into the conversations which could offer the only humane pathways through this moment of division.
Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, and to breach the silence, guilt and violence that surround whiteness. Brilliantly arranging essays, images and poems along with the voices and rebuttals of others, it counterpoints Rankine's own text with facing-page notes and commentary, and closes with a bravura study of women confronting the political and cultural implications of dyeing their hair blonde.
Wry, vulnerable and prescient, this is Rankine's most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, and being together.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MacArthur Fellowship recipient Rankine (Citizen: An American Lyric) combines poetry, prose, and imagery in this unique and powerful meditation on the challenges of communicating across the racial divide in America. Drawing on her own experience as a Black woman married to a white man, Rankine highlights the necessity of having uncomfortable conversations in order to understand both the experiences of other people and one's own needs and beliefs. In the essay "liminal spaces i," she recounts asking a white stranger about his understanding of white male privilege after he complained that his son couldn't use "the diversity card" to gain early admission to Yale, where Rankine teaches. In another essay, she contemplates asking her mixed-race daughter's white teachers about their "unconscious inevitable racism and implicit bias" at a parent-teacher conference. "Jos mart " features Rankine grappling with the limits of her own knowledge as she talks with a new friend about anti-Latinx racism. The discussion hits several snags, yet Rankine persists: "I still have questions, and the way to get answers is to bear her corrections." Other pieces incorporate commentary from Rankine's conversational partners and "fact checks" of her own assertions. The result is an incisive, anguished, and very frank call for Americans of all races to cultivate their "empathetic imagination" in order to build a better future.
