Citizen: An American Lyric

I read this book last semester for Professor Marshall's intermediate poetry class and after seeing some of the texts for this class, and the topic of this class, I was surprised that we have not read it, although I think it would not have necessarily fit in with the other works we have read this semester, as those have created a character that fits this class that I don't think "Citizen" necessarily would have.
This book recounts racial aggression that the narrator goes through, a new sort of "racism", a soft racism, and encounters around this topic, like slips of tongue, and place of everyday life, some intentional, some seemingly not. It also speaks on some of the bigger, more televised area of this with Serena Williams and Zinedine Zidane anecdotes.
This brings into question the narrators place in American society, what it means to be a person in America, a black person, someone who still in today's American society, which sells itself as a place anyone can come to and be treated fairly and make their own living, and meet a harsh, different reality. Rankine often mixes the two main topics that we talk about in class together, race and sex, together in this book, which is why I think this book would have been a great fit for this class. The book flows more as a story, and is pretty much all prose poetry, but still carries the poetic feel throughout the book. It is a great read and kept me wanting to read more. It combines lyric poems or essays as well as pictures as well, which also bring another dimension to her book. It is also the only poetry novel to ever be nominated for two genres in the National Book Critics Circle Award (nominated for poetry & criticism).