Triage

Claudia Rankine has widened contemporary literature with her genre-defying works. In Triage, her first book after her celebrated American trilogy, Rankine collides the lyric with narrative, memoir, image, and essay to offer her most personal and emotionally resonant writing yet, presented with full-color visuals. Triage follows the turbulent friendship between two characters, the narrator and the theorist, self-identified sisters struggling to define their histories and their shared but separate understanding of our current political landscape. The book—which Rankine will discuss with Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah at the BAM Fisher—is an argument for the necessity of grieving and the demand for action in our time of relentless loss.

Claudia Rankine is the author of eight books, including her American trilogy—Just Us: An American Conversation, Citizen: An American Lyric, and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric—as well as three plays and numerous video collaborations. Among her many accolades, she is the recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, Forward Prize, LA Times Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and MacArthur foundations, United States Artists, DAAD, The American Academy in Rome, The American Academy in Berlin, and the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII).

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is a writer living in Brooklyn.