Citizen in sports

I don't really like poetry at all actually. So, I was a little worried about Citizen even though it can sometimes not be displayed as poetry. However, after I read the first section of this book I was thrilled. I really enjoy reading this because its so unique and it expresses so much information in a different way than most books do. Yes, it is a short book with not a lot of words per page but if you actually look its enough words to tell the story that it wants to tell and the pictures help a lot to. I like every section in this book but my favorite section would be the second section about Serena Williams and all of the things that she went through. Zora Neale Hurston once said, "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background"; the narrator uses this statement to frame the situation of Serena being a black player in an overwhelmingly white sport. The most oppositional force in Serena Williams career has been the umpire Mariana Alves, who made five bad calls against Serena in one match back in 2004. The narrator suggests that it must have been Serena's black body that was "getting in the way of Alves's sight line" (29). The next year, the tournaments would install line-calling technology to challenge umpire callings via replay. When Serena is back on the court, she will be watched by a line judge who calls her out for stepping on the line during any serve. The announcers denounce the call, and numerous replays cannot indicate the moment of foul. Serena explodes at the line judge, having been thrown against a sharp white background. When Serena won at the 2012 Olympics, announcers said that she was "Crip-Walking all over the most lily-white place in the world... akin to cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church" (33). When told that the dance she had performed was called a Crip Walk, Serena asked if she looked like a gangster. The comment is taken and received lightly. She went on to win every match in 2012, and commentators would "remark on her ability to hold it together" despite questionable calls as usual (34). The section ends with Serena's tennis opponent, playfully embodying Serena’s physical attributes by stuffing cloth in her shirt and shorts on the court. The literal and metaphorical tennis match held throughout the book gives us a glimpse into the life of Serena Williams as well as the life of black Americans.