After reading the book Citizen, by Claudia Rankine, in our english class we were assigned the task of writing our own lyrical essays. Citizen is a book comprised of numerous examples of compelling lyrical essays that examine what it is like to be black in America. For our own lyrical essays were were supposed to pick an identity topic and then find someone who has a different identity than us and interview them about their experience. We were then supposed to turn these interviews into lyrical essays written in the second person. For my identity topic I chose race and interviewed one of my good friends to write a lyrical essay in the perspective of a young African American girl. I also find an image online that ties in with the theme of the lyrical essay.
The Bench of Two Different Worlds
You head back home from school walking by yourself since your friend Marc had basketball practice.
You notice the formation and alignment of your feet to the ground every footstep and attempt to change it to embrace a more confident stride. You continue implementing a different technique of stride or positioning of the foot until you trip because the curb jumped out in front of you.
Did it or did you?
Nevertheless, you look to your left to gain balance to come up again until you focus on the ads on the bench you have your hand clutched upon.
On one side is a young mother ad with an African American women
And
on the other is a white family gathered around a nicely set table.
The contrast of these two ads struck you by surprise.
The black woman is in a position of being a young mother which can perceive to those that she is homeless, sleeping around or can’t take care of herself. Whereas with the happy white family in a setting that is classy and nice creates the idea that they are rich and capable. The white family is the American Dream those enter this country for whereas the young black mother is one of the many imperfections this country finds themself in distress for. It isn’t that they are directly saying this, it is the message portrayed by it. From it, you can’t decide if you want to be a part of the white family or apart of the movement to empower “your people” to be portrayed in a more positive way. You want to be different but then again you love who you are and want to emphasize that.
But do you wish it could be easier than that?
Process to create the Listener Lyrical Essay:
With this Interview, I asked my interviewee questions I had written prior that I thought would help me gain enough understanding of the topic I wanted to do for my lyric essay. With the conversation I had recorded, I then transcribed the whole conversation to help give me full evidence/opinion to look at.