Just Us - Wyrms.de

352 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2020 by Graywolf Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-64445-119-9

(1 review)

As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history.

Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine's questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces--the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth--where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect.

This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a …

As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history.

Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine's questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces--the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth--where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect.

This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend's explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word.

Sometimes wry, often vulnerable, and always prescient, Just Us is Rankine's most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, being together.

3 editions

christa reviewed Just Us by Claudia Rankine

uncomfortable, necessary

5 stars

unlike in past works of hers I've read, rankine herself is present in this volume, constantly questioning whiteness and engaging the people that often unthinkingly bring it into her life. it's often, frankly, uncomfortable. there is conflict and tension. it has made me think a lot about the way that I engage in discussing whiteness, and my own desire to be understood in conversation—to have us leave on the same page, or to avoid if that's an unlikely outcome.

technically, I found the footnotes/fact checking really interesting. essay has a difficult relation with fact, as has been a conversation for years. I found the side-by-side checking of the authors own assumptions and, as a result, the inclusion of images, outside sources, citations, further reading and context for the reader is a really effective approach.

I also really recommend this recent city arts and lectures conversation with her, largely about just …

unlike in past works of hers I've read, rankine herself is present in this volume, constantly questioning whiteness and engaging the people that often unthinkingly bring it into her life. it's often, frankly, uncomfortable. there is conflict and tension. it has made me think a lot about the way that I engage in discussing whiteness, and my own desire to be understood in conversation—to have us leave on the same page, or to avoid if that's an unlikely outcome.

technically, I found the footnotes/fact checking really interesting. essay has a difficult relation with fact, as has been a conversation for years. I found the side-by-side checking of the authors own assumptions and, as a result, the inclusion of images, outside sources, citations, further reading and context for the reader is a really effective approach.

I also really recommend this recent city arts and lectures conversation with her, largely about just us, to everyone, but especially as context for the book: www.cityarts.net/event/claudia-rankine/