Miserable Communions: Sentimentality in Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

ABSTRACT:This essay draws on the discourse of sentimentality to define the political work of address in Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004). Rankine’s sentimentality takes the form of an affective state that I call the miserable communion, in which readers develop an ability to communicate about the historical and social causes of what is typically regarded as the private emotional experience of sadness. The politics of the miserable communion rest in what it renders possible to articulate.