Teju Cole’s debut novel, Open City, depicts Julius’s peripatetic journeys in New York City, as well as abroad, whilst reflecting their connotations to his past. Cole utilizes his main character’s driving narration to explore urbanization and urbanism (2011). To distinguish, urbanization refers to the growth in population within city areas, and the way in which societies adapt from rural to urban areas, opposed to urbanism which defines the features of social interactions within these areas (Pugh, 1966).
Firstly, the importance of narration is emphasized through its introduction in the novel: “And so” Julius begins his trail of thought, “I began to go on evening walks last fall,” continuing that [he] “found Morningside Heights an easy place”
As previously mentioned, he frequently visited his old professor, who was Japanese American. He attended a dinner given by Dr . Gupta, who was from Uganda, and also met with Nigerian soldiers. In addition he also sees an Asian woman in a coffee shop who is being taught English. Julius himself is from Nigeria, with German roots from his mother’s side. The variety of cultures within Open City, is a reflection of the book’s title itself: urbanisation, regardless of the growth in population within a city, urges a city to “become open” to different people from different cultures. For this reason Cole set his novel in New York City, which has become synonymous with a variety of cultures. People from different cultures within the urban setting do not only portray urbanization, because of their growth in popularity, but also urbanisation, because of the new social approaches that exist as a result of their presence (2011).
In conclusion, Open City portrays Julius’s journeys in New York City, and reflects on his past. Through his narration and the position of the flâneur that he becomes, it is possible to explore urbanization and urbanism with modern cities, such as New York. Through evaluating Julius’s narrative, it became apparent that it was not only the different spaces that he visited, but also the different people that he met, that played an important role in understanding City spaces and their constant
Elijah Anderson wrote an interesting book, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, which describes social settings and people interactions in different parts of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. This book was published on March 28, 2011 by W. W. Norton & Company. Anderson has observed these places in Philadelphia for over thirty years. He uses the observations he made and the stories that people shared with him during his endeavor to answer the following questions: “How do ordinary people in this diverse city interact across and along racial lines? When and how do racial identities figure out into these encounters? When and how do city dwellers set aside their own and other’s particular racial and ethnic identities to communicate
Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Social historians in recent years have started to look at the people who made up most of the population in cities, people who are usually ignored when looking at society,
The woman I met spoke pragmatically about avoiding crime in the city and this, more than anything else, depicted the prevalence of crime that, having grown up in a much smaller town, I had never experienced. The unbreakable grips that New York City’s denizens maintained on their belongings while engulfed in throngs of people suddenly made absolute sense in a way that I felt almost uncomfortable with. “Young Lions” also illuminates the frequency of crime in cities and, perhaps more disturbingly, the forethought individuals devote to stealing from others. While following Anna, Caesar explains that “for two months he had secretly placed himself in her life, doing all the scoping out, the drudgery that had once been up to Sherman” (Jones 63). This passage depicts the effort Caesar commits to stealing from a woman attempting to simply get through her
There has been many discussions about how people try to fit in society, whether it is for music, interests in subjects, or even trying to fit in a specific culture. Groups and individuals seems to have a distinction among each other when it comes down to fitting in society and how they differ and have tensions among each other to conform to social norms. In “Making Conversation” and “The Primacy of Practice” by Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses how all cultures have similarities and differences but sometimes those differences are so different that they can not connect to another nation. Manuel Munoz in “Leave Your Name at the Border” argues how immigrants in a city are forced to act more societal and how it typically affects the diversity in
New York City’s population is a little over 8.3 million people. 8.3 million people are spread out among five boroughs and each have their own set routine. Each one of those 8.3 million see New York in a different way becuase “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it” (“City Limits” 4). Some people are like Colson Whitehead who “was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else” (“City Limits” 3). Others may have “moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe [they] came here for school” (“City Limits” 3). Different reasons have brought these people together. They are grouped as New Yorkers, but many times, living in New York is their only bond. With on going changes and never ending commotion, it is hard to define New York and its inhabitants in simple terms.
The city, writes St. Augustine, “builds up a pilgrim community of every language .... [with] particular concern about differences of customs, laws, [and] institutions” in which “there is among the citizens a sort of coherence of human wills.”3 Put simply: the city is a sort of platform upon which “a group of people joined together by their love of the same object” work towards a common goal.4 What differentiates Augustine’s examination from other literary or theological treatments of the city is his attempt to carve out a vision of how the city operates—both the internal qualities and external ...
Ellison, Ralph “Invisible Man” The Places Where We Dwell Reading and Writing About New York City. Juanita But, Mark Noonan. Dubuque, Iowa. Kendall/Hunt Publishing 2007, P 196-199
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Open City is a novel that details the life of a Nigerian doctor who feels that he is detached from his homeland. It provides an epitome of how immigrants feel when they are not at home. Written by Teju Cole, who is of Nigerian descent but was actually born in the United States. The novel covers a broad spectrum of issues that immigrants face when not home. Julius, who is the story protagonist faces all these problems as he practices his residency in New York. Cole wrote this novel to emphasize on the daily life of an immigrant and how some immigrants are looked upon to play a certain stereotype due to the background. Cole’s vivid imagery and detailed writing allow the reader to actually understand how it felt to be an immigrant in the street of New York.
“Our cultural diversity has most certainly shaped our national character,” affirmed Julie Bishop. From my perception, New York City is one of the most densely inhabited metropolitan collection of cultural diversity in the world in which structures our temperament. New York City applies an imperative influence upon trade, economics, mass communication, skill, style, and education. Frequently it is known that New York City is a crucial core for global politics and has been depicted as the ethnic headquarters of the globe. New York City has been known as a melting pot of culture and as this prolong throughout towards the current day, the city has become ornate with distinct cultures. Just walking around the streets of the city can be like walking around the halls of a cultural museum. From borough to borough, you can straightforwardly experience several features of different cultures by going to the different ethnic neighborhoods that exist throughout the city. For instance, if you wanted to take a trip to China that you've always dreamed of but couldn’t afford it, when living in New York City you can hop on a subway to Canal Street and be in Chinatown for just a few dollars. Certainly, it's not the same as literally being in China, however, you can experience a quantity of the culture and perchance grab some bona fide Chinese food for dinner. Several places holds their culture to denote each individual in New York City, to make an abundant of people to visit and feel each culture one setting at a time.
In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.
The framework that Jameson utilizes helps us understand why the city owner in “I Bought a Little City” alters a perfectly industrialized city with antique ideals. Jameson introduces the idea that postmodernism, the absence of innovation, is a concept that plays an active role in our society but is not accepted as so. This is not widely accepted because it is frowned upon to not be unique or exclusive in our day to day lives. Being able to cultivate your own styles and ideas makes you a more desirable person in our culture. Jameson concedes that postmodernism has a main characteristic, stating “one of the most significant features or practices in postmodernism today is pastiche” (Jameson, 1983, p.113).
In the “Metropolis and the Mental Life”, Georg Simmel aims to explicate the confines and conventions of modern life. Simmel accomplishes this as he compares modern life in a metropolis with that of the countryside, noting the behaviours and characteristics of people in response to external factors. Simmel explains this by explicitly detailing how social structures affect certain personal connections. Several prominent themes of urban living are investigated and considered by Simmel in his article, the main points, harshness of the metropolis, modernity and subjective and objective cultures, are discussed in this essay.
Susan S. Fainstein, Scott Campbell. 2003. Readings in Urban Theory. Second Edition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.