To the author of Trespassers?: Your account on the cultural background invoked us to talk about cultrual appropriation. For most of the time, people tend to generalize a single cultural phenomenon as to represent the whole set of cultural system. Usually, a person won't truly understand the internal reason of the existence of different rituals and customs, but they will still practice it fo various reasons, sometimes just for attention and profits. Your discussion in your book about the so-called "model minority" stereotype gave us an inspiration to talk about the occurrence of micro-offense. Due to the inability to fully comprehend a kind of culture, a person may make another person uncomfortable by asking questions that gives hint to all the traditional stereotypes, and the tricky thing is that only the one who's being asked have the power to judge and explain, but sometimes explanation just won't work very easily. Your book can be modified by adding in these elements and discuss them more extensively.
Control
Dear Claudia Rankine, Thank you for Citizen . Before even opening the book, the cover struck me as I examined the torn, limbless black hoodie, now a symbol for racial profiling and police brutality. I was reminded of Ta-Nehesi Coates who writes about the lack of control black people have other their bodies, their lives, that can be taken from them at any moment because of microagressions and racism- all down to a hoodie. A black hoodie stands in for a black man, its presence seems to alert and warn the white viewer to stand armed. Upon reading the book, I fell in love with the way you structure prose poetry- it flows through memories and emotions which are not organized neatly and clearly. You place the reader as the "you" as they explore everyday racism (also known as microaggressions) and its detrimental impact on the person; we are forced into the crippling, disorienting minds of an annoymous person. You powerfully portray how racism deteriorates the psyche of a black p...
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