Keynote
A groundbreaking new direction for Claudia Rankine, the best-selling author of Citizen and Just Us
Book Title
Triage
Cover Image
“Claudia Rankine is fearless. . . . We need her.”—Los Angeles Times, “20 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2026”
Body
Claudia Rankine has widened contemporary literature with her consciousness-raising, genre-defying works. In her first book after her celebrated American trilogy, presented with full-color visuals, Rankine shifts into sustained narrative, memory, criticism, and essay to offer her most personal and emotionally resonant writing yet.
Triage follows the turbulent friendship between two composite characters, the narrator and the theorist, self-identified sisters struggling to define their wounded histories and their shared but separate lives. During college, they invent a game of collapse: Every time they see each other, they have to stop and fall to the ground. As their kinship continues off and on for decades, “collapse” takes on new meanings that are seen and felt in the violence of their pasts, artworks depicting couches where someone might ease their exhaustion, the ongoing devastation in Gaza, and the antagonism of their conversation and their love for each other.
Triage is an argument for the necessity of grieving and the demand for action in our time of relentless loss. “No matter our posture,” Rankine writes, “we are all among the rubble.” This is a book for those complicated but beautiful friendships that we come to rely on to unsettle us, to make us better.
Triage follows the turbulent friendship between two composite characters, the narrator and the theorist, self-identified sisters struggling to define their wounded histories and their shared but separate lives. During college, they invent a game of collapse: Every time they see each other, they have to stop and fall to the ground. As their kinship continues off and on for decades, “collapse” takes on new meanings that are seen and felt in the violence of their pasts, artworks depicting couches where someone might ease their exhaustion, the ongoing devastation in Gaza, and the antagonism of their conversation and their love for each other.
Triage is an argument for the necessity of grieving and the demand for action in our time of relentless loss. “No matter our posture,” Rankine writes, “we are all among the rubble.” This is a book for those complicated but beautiful friendships that we come to rely on to unsettle us, to make us better.
List Price
$28.00
Purchase at
Purchase at:
About the Author
Credit: Andrew Zuckerman / The Slowdown
Upcoming Events
Claudia Rankine reading and in conversation about TRIAGE at Politics & Prose
Date:
Location:
Politics & Prose in Washington, DCview map
Free and open to the public. Connecticut Ave location. Copies of Triage will be available for purchase from Politics & Prose. Click here for details.
Praise
“Rankine is a literary icon, so it’s no surprise that she’s found ways to blend genres and formats into her next book. . . . Rankine explores the backdrop of violence that has only intensified in recent years, as well as the love that keeps us together in emotionally numbing times.”—Harper’s Bazaar, “The 25 Most Highly Anticipated Books of 2026”
“The ever genre-fluid Rankine braids criticism, memoir and more in this illustrated story of two women whose lives diverge and reconverge over decades.”—The New York Times Book Review, “The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026”
“With a title suggestive of the grievous wounds so many Americans—and maybe America itself—are trying to endure, Rankine’s latest book challenges not only genre boundaries but also those that keep us from understanding and reckoning with the pain we feel, and that we may cause.”—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe, “75 of the Best Books This Summer”
“A celebrated poet asks how to live. . . . Illustrated with politically resonant artworks, Rankine’s lyrical melding of memoir and criticism poses urgent questions.”—Kirkus Reviews
