I was wondering if this was going to be mentioned. The "stolen generation" is one of the darkest and most shameful parts of Australian history, which is rarely acknowledged. Young aboriginal children were kidnapped by the government, and raised to be "white." The government forcefully and purposefully moved these children to different areas of the country, so that they would be unable to find their parents and the tribes they actually came from. Even today, many of their descendants don't know where their true roots are, and where their stolen generation ancestor was originally born. While America is also no stranger to stealing native children and raising them to be white, it is especially heinous that Australia's government specifically sought to destroy culture, essentially committing a cultural genocide through forceful re-education of children. It is doubly so in the way that many Australians refuse to acknowledge the extent of this theft of both land and culture.

The ending of Villawood is the part that left me the most speechless. I think that the cruelty which some people are capable of inflicting upon each other is one thing, but I was somehow more surprised by the indifference some people are capable of inflicting as well. To be cruel towards these refugees can be accomplished with propaganda or other means of painting them as the enemy. But to totally remove any kind of emotion towards them is something else entirely. It requires not just demonizing refugees, but completely dehumanizing them. I was shocked by how much thought that last line conveys: About both Australia's propaganda and ways of removing human dignity from refugees, and by how effective that propaganda is.

One of the most important things, especially for cultures without ways of preserving writing for long periods of time, is oral history. Telling a story or lesson to a younger generation is one of the only ways to make sure it will be remembered. Although this may no longer be the case, since ways of recording information have become far more widespread, it's still undeniable that oral history remains extremely important in numerous cultures around the world, including almost all of the surviving aboriginal tribes. The fact this man chose to pass on this song shows how important it is to him, akin to a legacy.

I think this final part of the story, ending with an address towards God, changes the way the previous sections are read. Although previous sections originally have a tone of someone recounting childhood, talking about their mother peeling potatoes, it quickly lapses into uneasy (In fact, the title of this group of three stories, Three Uneasy Pieces) discussion of exactly how uncomfortable it is to eat food, to consume other things on the planet for our own benefit. Switching the perspective in the final line of this piece, to speaking directly to God, turns White's work from an absent musing on unpleasantness into a direct confrontation with the powers above that made it so.

In a very odd way, this reminded me of two other texts we've read so far, Maru by Bessie Head and Coetzee's Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech. The connection to both comes from the idea of exile and isolation. In Maru, Margaret is just about exiled from her home place, due to lacking any kind of rights. If rights were resources, she would be one of the nomadic tribes that this text discusses. She is also undoubtably isolated, and left to fend for herself in life, with no allies. Even those she considers friends are using her, like Dikeledi. If we can think back even further, to Coetzee's Speech, the same themes emerge, despite the fact that Coetzee is a white man, and not a black woman like Margaret. One of the lines he spoke in particular: "Short of shaking the dust of the country off your feet, there is no way of actually doing it [resigning one's caste]." While Margaret may have been forced out with lack of rights, Coetzee speaks about the opposite: Fleeing in search of equality, and a way to resign the rights one has that one feels are wrong, and unnatural. Although these are both different reasons to leave one's home country and be in exile, I saw a connection between both of them and this reading.

Something I find impossible to overlook here is the way the father doesn't actually experience any consequences for his actions of destroying the sculpture. His daughter won't be directly angry at him, something he may or may not have anticipated, but he also doesn't need to face the actress and explain himself, and gets to enjoy a tour of the garden while his daughter struggles and deals with the loss of her artwork. Regardless of how the father anticipated his actions to be received, it's very clear that he doesn't face any of the backlash from them by the end of the reading.

I believe the example being referred to here is Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case which upheld a Georgia sodomy law against gay sex. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that the decision was made the week before Liberty weekend in 1986. This would fit in terms of the book's publishing date (1988) and in terms of the vague description of locked doors and bedrooms. If anyone else has any ideas, let me know!

I believe what the author is referencing here is the way that the old mercantile system of colonies has become modern. Mercantilism involves a core idea that the colonies both produce and buy products, with the mother country taking the profit. In this case, the seafood being consumed in Antigua was caught or grown on the island (“dirt-cheap”), then sold to Miami (for a low cost), and then, because all the food had been sold to Miami, was bought back from Miami at a higher cost, making America (the new “mother country”) rich, and Antigua poorer. It's a new system, but the same founding idea, and way of exploiting less powerful countries.

Julius is regularly consumed in his search for the past, as we see repeatedly throughout the book. In particular, I think that this section, where he muses on the dishonored mass-grave, is telling of his mental state as a whole. The story is true- Manhattan has hundreds to thousands of bodies buried under it, many we will probably not find for years to come. However, Julius seems particularly bothered by the idea of "office buildings, shops, streets, diners, pharmacies, and the endless hum of quotidian commerce and government" paving over the graves of slaves. Like everything in Open City, I believe this might be a reference to Julius' own mental state. We know he's clearly repressing something from his past, just as Manhattan is repressing a particularly dark part of it's history.

I think this segment, where Julius consciously zones out of a conversation, is very telling of him as a whole, and the rest of this chapter. He is finally acknowledges how detached he is from his surroundings, and seems to be fully aware of it for once. However, although Julius is finally admitting his lack of interaction emotionally with his surroundings, he doesn't seem to recognize it as a problem. He calls it a "party trick," and seems, like everything else, apathetically observant of this feature. Despite being a psychiatrist, Julius still seems in denial of his own mental issues.

This flashback provides a strange view at Julian's emotions for once. He is normally an extremely nonchalant narrator, to the point of being worryingly apathetic. However, he gives a unique look during this section. An energetic child, excited at a simple soft drink, which clearly symbolizes so much more to him. This young Julian couldn't be further from the one we see now in Open City. The Julian of the modern age doesn't seem emotionally stirred by anything- from his patients' mental states to his girlfriend breaking up with him. It's certainly a far cry from young Julian's cheerful exploration and desire for simple things he perceives as adulthood.

Open City deals a lot with racism and with the ways that bias present themselves to our narrator. Specifically, the narrator often finds himself being almost confided in by those who hold racist or biased beliefs. Perhaps because of his race, or because of his nature as a psychologist, it seems people are exceptionally open with telling Julian things about their lives, and sometimes, they expose the dark parts of themselves along the way, like the landlady and her bias against the French.

One of themes we mentioned in the first reading of Cole's work is the way that human beings interact. Julian frequently has his viewpoints changed by interacting with others, such as realizing his own ego when talking to the marathon runner earlier in Chapter 2. However, this short sentence serves to show that other humans don't just make us look differently at ourselves, they make us look differently at the world. Julian would have originally passed past the building with no real thought about it. But after seeing the artist devoting his time so closely, Julian looks over the building once more, this time inspecting it, rather than glossing over it, and comes away with new descriptions of this audience.

I think this is a beautiful way of describing the scene playing out, and it shows a lot about the narrator. We see the narrator's walks through their eyes, and through their brain. Words like "tightly regulated mental environment" give us more glances at their day to day life, which we haven't seen. But while doing this, it also carefully avoids detail- it doesn't mention what the narrator's job is, because so far in the story, it's not necessary to know exactly what the narrator does, only what they do to escape it. We learn that our narrator uses these walks as an escape, and that they've become such a coping mechanism that the narrator can't live without them, which says something about the lack of other comforts in the narrator's life. A lot of detail about our narrator's mental state and outside life are shown through very few words.

This reference comes from the Bible (Jeremiah 13:23). The full verse is, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." I think it's interesting the author choose to use this phrase to express his point. In the biblical story, the mention of being unable to change one's skin references a metaphor of a black man being unable to change his skin, while the author references white South Africans being unable to change theirs. I'm not sure if this indirect contrast between black and white both wishing to step free of their skin was purposeful or not, but I found it interesting nevertheless. What I found more interesting however, was the second half of the quote, that the author cuts off. "Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." the Bible verse, in a backwards way, is making the point that those who have grown up in sin and evil, like a leopard growing up with spots, cannot be washed free of it. Although the biblical story accompanying the expression (Black skin as a metaphor for sin itself) is horrifically racist, I believe the author may have been once again trying to turn the original source material on it's head, and make the opposite point: in South Africa, it is white skin, not black, which becomes the metaphor for sin, a life lived in unwon superiority over others. The author is once again making the point that white South Africans, if they have grown up with the "sins" of superiority, cannot simply step away from it.

I read this play as an analogy- Doctor Kerry, the "black psychiatrist" the play's title speaks about, is the victims of Apartheid, black men and women who witnessed their country as second class citizens. Gloria, the white woman, although not the oppressors themselves, is those who benefited from oppression- the farmers who gained riches through semi-slave labor, or really, any white person in the country who directly benefited from oppressing others. Following through with this analogy, I think the play's message is that the truth is unpredictable in what it reveals and who it harms. Gloria sought to expose Kerry for his communist partying, but ended up breaking down when Kerry, in turn, reveals that her father was not just a cheater, but a rapist. At numerous times during the struggle against Apartheid, some white citizens attempted to expose freedom fighters for ties to Russia (just like Gloria does to Kerry), but were in turn publicly shamed at the Truth and Reconciliation Committee for their role in Apartheid's government. The truth is almost never straightforward, and often turns on those who try to reveal parts of it to begin with.

The personification of the goats in these lines make an interesting statement on Margaret's mental state. Although the book is no stranger to personifying anything and everything, I think in these lines specifically, the goats are a strong reminder of Margaret's loneliness. She has been shunned in the village and ignored by everyone. Quite literally, only animals will talk to her outside of her classroom. And, as we see later on this page, even the goats judge her. Not even the animal kingdom is absent from being cruel and judgmental towards Margaret for one thing or another. However, although the author is trying to show us how unrelenting the entire world is towards Margaret, I think she is also trying to show us that Margaret remains strong despite these comments. Even when literally every mammal on earth seems against her, Margaret won't back down.

We can see a switch of roles here, which wasn’t present earlier in the book. Maru was originally presented as the calm and collected one, and Moleka as the cruel, womanizer between them. But in this chapter, we suddenly see them change roles, perhaps revealing their true characters. It is Maru who is without empathy, and Moleka who shows kindness. However, it is worth mentioning that Moleka isn’t fully empathetic. He cares about Margaret because he is attracted to her, not because of true understanding or sympathy for her suffering. Although he does change many factors of his previously racist life- like not using Marsarwa slaves- this does not change the fact this empathy doesn’t come from a place of selflessness, but of one of desire for an individual. Although the end result is the same, the fact Moleka only makes this change because he wishes to marry Margaret makes his kindness somewhat superficial.

I think Margaret the younger’s complex relationship with her older namesake is one which a majority of the story is shaped by. The older Margaret Cadmore is responsible for a lot of the advantages she gets in life- actually, as an outcast racial group, she doesn’t usually get any. But despite this, the older Margaret is by no means a good mother figure. She cares for the baby, but does so in a very detached way. Even when she’s bonded with the baby, and raised her from childhood, she experiences no emotion when Margaret goes away to teach, “dabbing her dry eyes” and “pretending to cry.” She clearly has some kindness in her, and we can assume she at least isn’t outwardly racist (She is disgusted by the nurses not cleaning Margaret’s birth mother’s body, and calls Margaret’s birth mother a goddess, showing appreciation for her physical characteristics where many do not.) However, at the end of the day, I think this line summarizes her, where she calls Margaret a “real, living object.” In the end, we are left to guess if she focuses on the “real” or the “object” part of her description. The older Margaret Cadmore remains a complete enigma, even in the story’s third person narrative.

What the author mentions here, and what we have seen throughout this exploration into the Partition, is the way in which women seem to frequently be the first harmed and last saved from violence in wartime. The author includes a very vivid description of “the appropriation of bodies of women as objects.. brutally inscribed..”, but I believe we’ve seen this trauma run far deeper. In “A Spell To Reverse The Line”, by Bhanu Khapil, women are described as being tied to trees and gutted beside the road, a mass-murder of women witnessed by the author's mother. In “The Return”, by Saadat Hasam Manto, the narrator’s daughter Sakina is kidnapped and raped, returning too traumatized to speak. Every author whom we have explored has, in some way, mentioned the particular violence against women which occurred during these times of unrest in India and Pakistan. Today, it is estimated that during the Partition, 75,000 to 100,000 women were kidnapped and raped (Butalia, Urvashi. Harsh Dobhal (ed.). Writings on Human Rights, Law and Society in India: A Combat Law Anthology. Human Rights Law Network. p. 598. ISBN 81-89479-78-4.), a horrifyingly high figure which still excludes survivors who never told their stories, those who were raped but not kidnapped, and those who were killed after the deed, and who’s stories will never be known. Although the author only mentions it briefly, violence against women is an undeniable segment to the story of the Partition.

The repetition of the word spell is very important in this poem, and especially in this line. Poems have been compared to spells for years, in fact, most spells in mythology or fairytales use many of the same aspects most traditional poems do- rhyming, a meter, and a particular way of speaking in breaks and lines. In the author's case, the "spell" is perhaps poetry itself; She is using poetry to "stop the loop" and finally break free of a traumatic generational silence. The author's mother, who witnessed the partition, clearly did not escape with her mind wholly intact, readers quickly recognize that she is undoubtably traumatized, even years later. Her need to pass on her trauma- to her child, and her grandchild- can be a way of coping. Like a spell, perhaps her trauma and grief feel almost paranormal in their influence over not just her life, but the author's life as well. However, the author is not content to abide by this "spell" of silence, only talking about trauma to the family who will carry it after you die. Instead, the author's "spell" offers a new outlet for that pain, besides being forced to keep it inside: poetry. By writing her family's story down, the author frees herself from the burden of carrying it. She "stops the loop" of generational trauma.

This line of dialogue is pretty ambiguous, but I read it to be the "false apology" of the abuser. Someone who is causing harm to others, and "apologizes," but while missing the true thing they should be apologizing for. In this case, I interpreted the "man with the knife" to be saying that cutting "also the string holding the man's pyjamas" was a mistake- he meant to stab the man, but is apologizing for also accidentally slicing his victim's pyjamas. This could be compared to the governments of both countries during the partition apologizing for minor harm- like delayed trains and separated families- while never accepting or apologizing for the riots one side in particular helped enflame, or inaction in the face of their civilians dying.