Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is the author of several collections of poetry. Prior to Just Us, she released Citizen: An American Lyric in 2014. Both of these books are genre hybrids that blend poetry, essay, memoir, and visual elements to consider themes related to racism in the United States. Citizen was the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Rankine teaches at Yale University.

Throughout Just Us, Rankine discusses incidents and relationships from her personal life to address the broader issues of racial injustice and white supremacy as part of the American sociopolitical landscape. In the chapter called "lemonade," she writes of the challenges in her interracial marriage that can be attributed to the low value placed on black women in society, and in "daughter," she worries about unconscious bias among the white teachers at her biracial child's...