Don't Let Me Be Lonely is poet and scholar Claudia Rankine's genre-defying exploration of loneliness, death, grief, mental health, and popular culture in America. Published in 2004, the book primarily deals with the effects of the 9/11 attacks, the influence of mass media, the tensions of race politics, and the pervasiveness of prescription drugs.
Rankine's work was widely admired for its grave and brilliant take on its subject matter, along with its experiments in form. Erik Andersen states, "Don’t Let Me Be Lonely moves, ceremonially, through one symptom of...disturbance after another. Against the painful 'recognition that billions of lives never mattered'—and against our collective...
