ABSTRACT
Claudia Rankine’s formally experimental book-length poem Citizen can help therapists deconstruct their own implicit racism and understand the countless microaggressions that patients of color endure. The self that Rankine describes includes the experience of people of color all over the world, from the tennis star Serena Williams to victims of police violence. This inclusion is emphasized in the text by the confusion of pronouns. The poem is seen as both a cry from one poet’s painful experience and an indictment of racism in general. It is thus a useful guide into the inner life of patients of color, in which personal and societal pain intermix. The chapter concludes with a case vignette in which the therapist and patient act out their own histories of racism and anti-Semitism, a disruption whose repair enables the treatment to go forward.
