Week 5 - Lin to Rankine


Dear Claudia Rankine,

The visceral experience of reading your book has been quite powerful. I was especially struck by the overarching sentiment; the feeling most colored when you are thrown against a sharp white background. This imagery has stuck with me as I have considered your painful meditations on self, body, and history. I am curious what it means to be also an American, although I Asian and a recent immigrant, thrown against a stark white background. While examining my own background, immigrant culture and Asian values of harmony and no conflict comes up but your paper has led me to believe much more examination is possible in the relationship of Asian bodies to black bodies to white bodies in a white landscape. Toni Morrison is illuminating in her examination of the deep links American immigration and subsequent assimilation has to anti-blackness, and I hope to add onto this thought and literature in the future. This backdrop of whiteness and all it encompasses – white rage, white silence, violence, mass murder, and also internalized anti-blackness – makes me question who any of us would be in a world that did not hate black people. I cannot even begin to imagine the possibilities of freedom for all of us. Thank you for your beautiful and heartbreaking work.

Sincerely,
Liz Lin

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