I start carrying Rankine’s book around, rereading passages whenever I feel sad or lonely or lost, in the metro, at work, during parties.ĭon’t Let Me Be Lonely feels relevant every time I read it, which speaks to the strength and multiplicity of Rankine’s poems, of her words, of her perspective. I start looking for more grounding truths. This reiteration grounds me, reminds me that I’m here, with this book, existing in multiplicities. Z texts me “truths are multiple ” and sends me a juggling emoji. The things we tell each other to feel better or worse. This is a hard fact I need to learn, and as I reread Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2004), I feel Claudia Rankine’s speaker reiterating this to me, “I could choose that or rather I could be all that I am – fictional,” (104) and the complexity of being, the choices and the differences, all become part of this fiction. My therapist tells me it’s important to understand that something can be more than one thing at a time multiple truths can exist at the same time. The Things We Tell Each Other: A Response to Claudia Rankine’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” Books will be for sale by the Co-op bookstore and Rankine will be available for signing after the reading.

In anticipation of Claudia Rankine’s visit to Concordia University this week we will feature writing that responds to Rankine’s works Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. Rankine will be giving a public reading at 7pm, Main the DeSeve Cinema in Concordia’s Library building on de Maisonneuve.

Claudia rankine dont let me be lonely