By the title of Claudia Rankine’s book “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric,” I wasn’t sure exactly what I was expecting. Will it be a sad story addressing the lonely life of the “me” mentioned in the title or perhaps the general state of the American people; a state of loneliness? What I found was the adjective lonely, a word that seemed to act as an undercurrent throughout the entire text. Claudia’s style is at once technical yet extremely personal and relatable. Relatability is exactly one of the reasons that I chose this text. The first line of the first page of the story is “There was a time where I could say no one I knew well had died,” and yet as I moved through the text there was the constant questioning of death and the subtle and un-subtle expressions of depression (5).
Rankine includes various stories of death and her own personal struggles with depression as well as the people that are close beside her. She takes a position outside of herself with which to see the world and society that surrounds us all. America’s desensitization of death and our incapability to deal with our own traumas makes us all lonely because we do not know the means to express ourselves. Before the story even begins Rankine starts off with a quote from Aime Cesaire that I believe accurately describes the meaning of her American Lyric. “And Most of all beware, even in thought, of assuming the steriles attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of grief is not a proscenium, a man who wails is not a dancing bear….”
In terms of transgenre, this text certainly does it credit. Beginning with format, each page varies in length and content of its words; from one paragraph inserts to strategically placed pictures of static televisions, when you skim through the pages it does not look like a normal novel. It does not move chronologically nor does it only tell of her experiences but the experiences of many whose stories may have or may not have mattered. A six-year-old beaten to death to millions of HIV-positive South Africans, Rankine makes the point that these lives do not matter. She also questions this statement and at one point writes that this expression of grief or physical pain over a loss “is not something an “I” discusses socially.” (57).
She is constantly questioning her own lack of emotion over this fact that millions of lives never mattered. Why is she sad? She writes about these deaths without experiencing some sort of grief or pain and thinks that maybe that is the reason for her sadness. Claudia Rankine does not like the news. Another theme that I got out of this text is that the American people are all trapped by the same apathy and treatment of death. Our media and government bombard us with death each day and by the time we are grown we have this detached notion of death, as if it is not important, as if it doesn’t directly concern us. But, although we are lonely because of this inability to express ourselves over one of the most important events of our mortal lives in a social atmosphere, this combined loneliness is the thing that connects the people in this nation.
To say that this text has influenced me to write differently, well, I cannot determine that yet, but I can say that it made me think. It made me think of my thoughts on death and the various stories covered in the book and it also made me think of how a writer can use other people’s stories to enhance their own. A creative writer must not only be able to come up with fictional events but factual ones that can give the reader a true connection to their story. Images also play an important role in Rankine’s book, the photographs being able to invoke strong emotion out of the reader even when the writer is not using words to do so. A writer’s tools include so many things, and this book has taught me how to use a variety of them effectively. Although I’m sure I’ve barely touched the surface of this book, I’ve been able to connect with it and because of that I believe that this was a successful interaction.
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