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For all of us who are acquainted with Claudia Rankine's book, Citizen: An American Lyric, you must be familiar with the concepts of invisibility and hypervisibility of race. Rankine has managed to beautifully play with the conventions of lyrical poetry to depict the racial paradigm in the United States. Gustavo Fadel explored this book in his thesis, which motivated him to write this poem addressing similar themes.
On Invisibility and Hypervisibility
I am here and yet no one seems to notice.
I am there and somehow everyone stares at me.
My existence happens at the intersection of a paradox -
a construction of constrictions that ties my hands and my feet.
A construction that attempts to reduce my entire existence
to a sign, a symbol, a convention;
an agreement between gentlemen
to erase me and highlight my insignificance.
My voice has no sound to them
because they can’t hear me.
And my suffering means nothing to them
because they can’t see me.
However, when they really want to, they see me.
Not really me, but the construction of me.
They see me, yet they don’t see me,
they see only what they have made of me.
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