Episode 40: Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine with Glauco Adorno

Dear Adam Silver

On today's podcast, my dear friend Glauco Adorno and I discuss the book Citizen: An American Lyric by award winning poet, playwright, educator and multimedia artist Claudia Rankine. This book is a masterful unpacking of how racism exists in the United States. Rankine combines poetry, pros, found images and text to express a personal meditation on how the system of white supremacy functions in this country, both in obvious and subtle ways. Specifically, a a large portion of the book is focused on Serena Williams and the hateful and unjust treatment she has experienced from the professional tennis world based on the color of her skin.

Glauco Adorno is a Brazilian curator and art historian based in Rio de Janeiro. We met each other during our time as graduate students at Louisiana State University. His website can be found here. On today's episode he also shares some of what his experience has been like during COVID-19 and how the virus is being handled in Brazil. He is also featured on episodes 3 and 25 of Dear Adam Silver.

Claudia Rankine was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1963 and received her BA from Williams College in 1986 and her MFA in poetry from Columbia Universit in 1993. She is currently the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. Her website can be found here.

If you are interested in listening to any lectures by Rankine, the links are listed below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cnq71TlUvo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxU3MJmhzl0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-SNKU3T7iA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYa25y4EGec&t=780s