“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”
—Zora Neale Hurston 

The cover of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric throws the hood of a sweatshirt against a sharp white background. The hood is threadbare; its symbolic weight is considerable: it immediately brings to mind images of young black life and its execution, as well as the deliberate, systematic imprisonment of millions of black citizens. And juxtaposed with the uppercased title — CITIZEN — this hood, torn from its body, is shot through with consequence: it becomes a metaphorical citizen, with alienable rights, ripped from the body politic and hanged — in a gallery. As a political maneuver that fronts a book of poetry, the placement of the hood beams with the contradictions of our historical moment — Trayvon Martin wears a hoodie and is ruthlessly murdered; Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie to the launch of his IPO and earns a billion dollars. So it’s all the more shocking when you realize that the hood is actually an artwork (“In the Hood”) by David Hammons from 1993, exhibited one year after the LA riots. … Read More