16 pages • 32 minutes read
On the train the woman standing
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Brown Love” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2020)
“Brown Love” shares several characteristics: Both poems use long lines and some disrupted grammatical structures; both poems address racism in travel; and both poems use a particular point-of-view to create a specific feeling for the reader. In contrast, “Brown Love” uses the first-person plural “we” and “our” to describe events, which creates a different scenario than Rankine’s “you.”
“It Bruises, Too” by Kwame Dawes (2022)
In this one-stanza poem, Dawes’s speaker is an unknown “journeyman” (Line 6) traveling through a seemingly metaphorical space. There is a second person in the poem whom the speaker addresses but does not define. The location of the two people is hazy, which is somewhat similar to the structure of Rankine’s “[On the train the woman standing],” where precise location is implied and allegorical.
“Visa” by Solmaz Sharif (2021)
This philosophical and personal poem addresses a different angle of racism in travel, describing the moments in which a close relative approaches arrival to a new country, only to be stopped in customs. The title of the poem is addressed in the piece itself, creating a new way to think about the word “Visa.” This piece is like “[On the train the woman standing]” both in the way it arcs through the speaker’s musings about the situation and in how the piece shifts the reader’s view of a tense moment in transit.
Further Literary Resources
“Color Codes” by Dan Chiasson (2014)
This analytical and descriptive piece about Rankine’s book Citizen is a useful companion for readers first encountering “[On the train the woman standing].” Chiasson provides some literary and historical context for the book and explores some of Rankine’s authorial choices over the course of the poems and essays included in the text.
“On Whiteness and The Racial Imaginary” by Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda (2015)
This adaptation of a longer essay explores how writers’ imaginations create portrayals of race that reflect the writer’s own understandings and positions. More specifically, Loffreda and Rankine describe how the imagination is shaped, altered, and critically impacted by whiteness, as well as how authors can attempt to counteract this effect. This is a useful essay for readers who are interested in examining “[On the train the woman standing]” through an academic lens.
“Recitatif” by Toni Morrison (1983)
A best-selling short story by Toni Morrison, “Recitatif” is a narrative following two friends in childhood, and later, when they meet again in adulthood. The two friends are in conflict partly due to their different races, yet Morrison never reveals which character is white and which character is Black. Rankine’s intentional removal of racial identification in “[On the train the woman standing]” mirrors Morrison’s earlier work. For readers interested in thinking more about the authorial intentions and historical context of Rankine’s work, Morrison’s “Recitatif” is a helpful resource.
“Using poetry to uncover the moments that lead to racism” video by the Poetry Foundation (2014)
This short video is produced by PBS and the Poetry Foundation; in it, Rankine describes her intentions in using poems, essays, and “hybrid texts” to address racism on an interpersonal basis between people. This is a unique opportunity to hear Rankine’s personal musings on her intentions in writing the book Citizen.
Listen to Poem
Rankine recites her poem for the project "Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community."
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By Claudia Rankine
