The Americanity of the “American Lyric”: Claudia Rankine in Ibero-American Translation

Claudia Rankine’s “American Lyric” problematizes received notions of a racialized lyric imaginary within the u.s. literary tradition. Recent translations of her work suggest the ongoing relevance of the poet’s project beyond national lines. This article offers a preliminary account of the American lyric in Ibero-American translation, focusing on Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Engaging Aníbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein’s framework of “Americanity as a concept,” the essay considers how the American lyric provokes considerations of antiblack racism, ethnonationalism, and statesanctioned violence in a hemispheric context. The second half analyzes the framing and execution of Ciudadana. Una lírica americana (Ediciones Antílope, 2022), translated into Spanish by Yolandi Cruz Guerrero. Drawing on Isabel C. Gómez’s theorization of “cannibal translation” and Lorgia García Peña’s conceptualization of translation as vaivén, a close reading of this Mexican edition reveals how translators and cultural workers in the Global South are reframing Rankine’s work as a productive starting point for conceiving alternatives to entrenched models of national and transnational belonging.