Sunday, May 19th, 3:00 – 5:00 PM (Symmes Room)

On May 19 from 3 to 5 PM the Racial Justice Book Group will host a community-wide discussion of the lyrical and challenging book Citizen by Claudia Rankine. The conversation will be held in the Symmes Room.

The book, written in 2014 and a New York Times Best Seller, has won numerous awards including Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and National Public Radio, NAACP Image Award, and the National Critics Circle Award for Poetry. For more information about the book group, please visit:

The Racial Justice Book Group welcomes Aba Taylor, currently the Racial Equity and Training Practice Lead at the Interaction Institute for Social Change and former Executive Director of the Multicultural Network, as the facilitator. She has spent the last two decades working for social justice as an educator, facilitator, organizer, consultant, and nonprofit executive. Aba has guided other organizations in exploring Citizen’s message and says that this short book is a favorite of hers.

Rankine, Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University and a 2016 winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, posed these questions during an interview: “What does it feel like to live now? For all of us, what forms our encounters? What does black living look like, feel like? What does American living look like, feel like? What does it mean for people of color to interact with white Americans? “

Anecdotes, poetry in prose, photographs, art work, contemporary events—Citizen will find a way to reach into every reader’s heart and intellect. “Hold up, did you just hear, did you just say, did you just see, did you just do that?” Join the discussion!