Just Us

If ever there was a book deserving to be read in print, this is it. On the righthand pages of Rankine’s masterpiece are poems, stories, and images circling this year’s primal question—what is the real status of racism and difference in this world? On the lefthand side, Rankine offers a contrast: sidebar conversation, ephemera, and pieces of evidence that sometimes go counter to the opposite page. The book creates a live dialogue with itself and its eponymous us. Rankine is deservedly lauded as one of our major national poets and thinkers of the American and the Black experience, and in this gorgeous volume she pushes the boundaries of what a physical book can do while maintaining the intimacy and immediacy of her previous work. The admissions here feel confidential and active, as if Rankine were informing us of her struggles and doubts in real-time.