studeronomy's reviews
97 reviews

As Charles Darwin wrote in his notebook, "The mind is a function of body." And, as this book convincingly shows, the body keeps a vicious tally of the wounds inflicted on the mind. These physical tallies are most easy to detect in people who suffer from PTSD and its adjacent disorders, but the implications of this book is that all our bodies carry the suffering our spirits have endured in ways that are tangible and quantifiable.

I know "The Body Keeps the Score" has its detractors and, because Bessel van der Kolk wrote it for a popular audience, he necessarily simplified some otherwise complex studies and truncated some otherwise complex research conclusions. But van der Kolk's observations over a fifty-year career demonstrate a couple things to me:

First, the field of psychiatry is (or was, until recently) hopelessly siloed. Psychopharmacologists aren't talking to neuroscientists aren't talking cognitive scientists aren't talking to social workers and therapists. Communication between disciplines and subdisciplines is very poor. And this doesn't begin to address the different methods of treating trauma that van der Kolk describes, most of which developed in disparate subdisciplines without much coordination with other subdisciplines. The whole organization of psychiatry (like the organization of most fields of study) is very messy.

Second, psychiatry still lacks its "germ theory," an explanation for the prevalence and cause of most mental illnesses and mood disorders. And such a theory might be impossible, given the nature of the mind itself. As Darwin also wrote in his notebook, "Experience shows the problem of the mind cannot be solved by attacking the citadel itself." An attack on the "citadel" of the mind cannot be a direct attack. There may be no unifying theory of the varied experiences we associate with "mind," "brain," "cognition," "the soul," whatever. And certainly no single field or discipline or method will unlock the mysteries of those experiences. 

I hadn't read Raymond Carver since I was in my twenties, probably, maybe not since I was in college, and now I'm in my forties and I just watched Birdman and thought to myself, "I need to reread Carver. I need to see what Carver is like when you're in your forties." So I read this one, and I'm gonna read Cathedral at some point in the near future. But reading this in my forties, I realize how little I understood in my twenties about anything and how little I understand, even in my forties, about the lives of most people who live in my country. I don't understand ninety-nine percent of what most Americans are doing.

So there's stuff in Carver I understand better now and there's stuff I still don't understand. And I'm like, "Why do we teach these stories about working-class and middle-class marriages in the Carter/Reagan era to nineteen-year-olds in college?" Like, what do nineteen-year-olds in an Introduction to Literature classes get out of Carver? The whole sentiment, the experiences, the subject matter, it's all so damned middle-aged. But my wife said, "It's because of subtext," and that made sense, Carver is really great at subtext and that's something nineteen-year-old students in Intro to Literature need to understand.

Another thing: I kept getting the names of the characters confused. 

This is a self-consciously “Very. Important. Book.” Claudia Rankine is aiming for a Whitman-level scope here, and mostly she achieves it, I think. This poem deserves its reputation. But I think because Rankine's aim was to write a “Very. Important. Book” about “Very. Important. Issues” that are both “Topical” and “Transhistorical,” “Particular” and “Universal,” so overwhelmed me that I sometimes missed the subtlety of much of this American epic poem. And the subtlety is there, to be sure.

Let me explain...

As virtually everyone knows at this point, “Citizen” is a much-lauded poem written in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death (I’d call it a murder, but a jury in Florida disagreed) and the subsequent BLM movement, which called attention to fact that, for Black people everywhere (Rankine writes about America), encounters with the police carry an added threat of physical assault and murder. “Citizen” was published in the year that police officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking a backlash that would evolve into the nationwide movement, culminating in the massive 2020 BLM protests.

This is all heavy stuff, and this is what Rankine is tackling.

At one point, as she reflects on the Black experience—from microaggressions to institutional racism and state-sponsored murder—Rankine sarcastically writes: "No one should adhere to the facts that contribute to narrative, the facts that create lives. To your mind, feelings are what create a person, something unwilling, something wild vandalizing whatever the skull holds. Those sensations form a someone. The headaches begin then." 

It's a beautiful passage. It’s an unclear passage. It surely describes Rankine’s experience with the socially and institutionally induced migraines—the torturous headaches—that Black people endure throughout their lives in the United States. But this passage also describes experiences that white people can understand, in other ways. I certainly related to it. The degree to which I related to this passage is, however, complicated by the fact that, as a white man, my American citizenship (and the accompanying rights and prestige that come with my American citizenship) are rarely if ever called into question. I am, in almost every space I inhabit, safe. That safety is not afforded to Black Americans, no matter their class or status.

Regarding safety, Rankine writes:

"And where is the safest place when that place
must be someplace other than the body?" 

Who can answer this question when a Black American asks it? Seriously, who? Rankine, at another point, quotes James Baldwin: "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers." Rankine definitely lays bare those questions in “Citizen.”

I can’t say enough about the visual artwork that is integrated into Rankine’s poem. It…packs a punch. Every single image. I can’t say enough about it, so I won’t say much of anything, except that it moves and disgusts and inspires and nauseates the reader, that it adds so much beauty and power to this poem. 

But the ambition and the confusion…I don’t know, after a while, I got very tired reading this poem. Which is the point, I know, especially because I’m a white reader. I admire Rankine’s ambition so much, but…there’s just something here that I can’t articulate, something that doesn’t quite satisfy me. Something about “Citizen” seemed very incomplete to me. Disjointed. Confusing. Maybe it’s because I want a winner, I want answers, I want justice and atonement and forgiveness and all that. But that’s not possible, not yet, for the readers of “Citizen.” As Rankine says in the last line…well, I won’t spoil that for you.

I want to give “Citizen” five stars and three stars. I’m giving it three stars because I think enough readers have given it five. But this is clearly a five-star poem, no question. I had a three-star experience reading it, but a very unusual and confusing sort of three-star experience. Maybe its awareness of the scope and enormity of its themes, of its stories, bothered me a bit. I don’t know. But that doesn’t make it less impressive or powerful.