Abstract
ABSTRACT While Julius, the narrator of Open City (2011), foregrounds walks, intellectual digression, and stories of minor characters, personal traumatic memories paired with traces and remnants of chattel slavery and the slave trade haunt him. My analysis of Teju Cole’s novel focuses on flight as a physical and mental movement that Julius performs, trying to flee from an association with his Nigerian past and the past of the Atlantic world. His compulsive walks and cosmopolitan musings offer only temporary, improvised refuge. The text remains caught in the gendered history and anti-black legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery as well as the ways in which Julius is implicated not only as a witness and victim but also as a perpetrator. Gendered anti-black violence, I argue, forms the obscured ground on which Julius’s narration is built, while the novel’s narrative techniques of oversharing and evasion ultimately negotiate its narratibility.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
