Open City

Open City explores the narrator’s racial identity, as well as the diverse identities of the people he meets in New York City and Brussels. Because he was born and raised in Nigeria, Julius sees his identity as different from that of Black Americans who are the descendants of enslaved people. Members of this latter group often want to connect with Julius because of their shared racial identity. For instance, a patient, Mr. F., says to him, “Doctor, I just want to tell you how proud I am to come here, and see a young black man like yourself in that white coat, because things haven’t ever been easy for us, and no one has ever given nothing without a struggle” (210). The patient forms a connection to Julius based on race; Julius doesn’t reject that connection, but he feels a degree of alienation, realizing that their common bond is not as straightforward as Mr. F. may think.

Throughout the novel, Julius considers identity as a complex network of commonalities and differences. He references Yoruban religious culture at a few points throughout the novel and considers how it differs from other religions. When he sees a woman praying through his window, he thinks, “Others are not like us, I thought to myself, their forms are different from ours. Yet, I prayed, too. I would gladly face a wall and daven, if that was what had been given to me” (215). In the subway, he names the Yoruba deities Obatala and Olodumare, connecting Obatala with people who “suffer from physical infirmities” (25). This category includes not only a blind man on the subway, but also John Brewster, an artist whose “deafness made him an outsider” (39). Later in the novel, Julius wonders if a woman at a party is deaf and considers asking the hostess, Moji, if his assumption is correct.

Julius’s psychiatric work focuses on the elderly, and he often talks to elderly people he meets in public, seeking to understand the physical and mental challenges that sometimes come with age. He notices how, within the grouping of patients with mental health conditions, “the differences are so profound that, really, what we are looking at is many tribes, each as distinct from the others as it is from the tribe of the normal” (205). Differences include individual mental state, not just outward physical appearance. Furthermore, mental states are harder to apprehend than skin color and can vary more widely than the range of skin tones.

Julius can be compared and contrasted with Farouq, a Moroccan he meets in Brussels. Farouq admires Malcolm X, who “recognized that difference contains its own value” (105). He believes “people can live together but still keep their own values intact” (112) and he wants “to understand how that can happen” (113). His shop is one place that brings very different people together to use the internet or make long-distance phone calls. He speaks a variety of languages to communicate with his diverse clientele. Farouq believes everyone suffers: “that is history: suffering” (123), and he sees the universality of suffering as the basis for a multicultural society in which people from diverse backgrounds and cultures coexist. On the other hand, Dr. Maillotte later uses this same claim about the universality of suffering to dismiss Farouq’s experience of racial discrimination.