Book Review: "The City We Became" by N.K. Jemisin
“The City We Became” by N.K. Jemisin
Bookshop | Kindle
Publisher Synopsis: In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.
In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her.
In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
And they're not the only ones.
Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six.
Rating (out of 5): 5
Trigger Warning: xenophobia and racism (…from Staten Island, who else?)
Review: I have been in a bit of a reading slump lately (I discovered Animal Crossing), so what better way to jump back in than with a fantasy novel that literally personifies the city I’ve called home for more than 10 years now.
The premise of the novel is that all great cities are alive—once they reach a certain threshold, they are born, and a person is chosen to become the city’s avatar. When New York is born in the novel’s opening chapter, the primary avatar is hurt and vanishes. So, the city then becomes five additional people—one for each borough. I found each the perfect personification of their borough: Manny, the multiracial newcomer who arrives to the city for college; Brooklyn, the M.C.-turned-local-politician; Bronca, the Lenape gallery director; Padmini, the Tamil immigrant living with her aunt and uncle; and Aislyn, the 30-year-old daughter of a cop who still lives at home.
The avatars have to find one another and engage in a battle to save the city from being engulfed by another city from another universe. As the novel progresses, we learn more about the multiverse and how cities become born and how some, like Atlantis and Pompeii, fail. Some city births, like those New Orleans and Port Au Prince, fail—i.e. Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake. Among the fantasy (does this qualify as magical realism?), there are beautiful passages about New York; I highlighted so many paragraphs throughout the novel and want to reread it now that I understand the premise a bit better.
As the avatars find one another and realize their mission—to find the primary avatar of New York and defeat the enemy encroaching on their territory—they are joined by Sao Paulo and Hong, avatars from other cities sent to help them. It becomes clear early on that the Enemy is police brutality, and as the novel progresses, we can add gentrification and white supremacy to the Enemy’s weapons, too. It’s an incredibly clever premise in which the boroughs have to work together, instead of against each other, to overcome these enemies. (And I’d argue that here IRL, we’re still in the process of doing so.) Each borough has their own prejudices against the other, and their own strengths, and this is what makes New York so special—and so frustrating at times.
Throughout the novel, each avatar becomes more enmeshed in his or her borough, and, while the New York in the novel is the one I know and love, it’s also wholly of Jemisin’s imagination. New York is often cited as a key character in novels, TV shows, and movies (“Sex and the City” being the most obvious, yet white-washed, example), and here, Jemisin turns New York into the actual characters. I adored it.
Little asides throughout the novel are clearly intended for those of intimately familiar with the city; at one point, Sao Paulo mentions that there’s “not a lot of Mexican food in New York,” a common refrain among those of who live here, (and those who have left for LA).
When describing the primary avatar, Sao Paulo says, he’s “Arrogant. Angry. Frightened, but unwilling to let his fear restrict him. He pretends to be less special than he is, because the world has punished him for loving himself. And yet he does. He knows he’s more than whatever superficialities strangers see and dismiss.” I recently celebrated my 10-year anniversary of moving to the city, and this book is absolutely a love letter to the strength and resiliency of New Yorkers—and this year in particular, that resiliency has been necessary.
I’ll leave you with a passage from the novel’s opening chapter, in which the primary avatar of New York battles the enemy:
The Enemy tries some kind of fucked-up wiggly shit—it’s all tentacles—and I snarl and bite into it ‘cause New Yorkers eat damn near as much sushi as Tokyo, mercury and all. Then I shower the Enemy with a one-two punch of Long Island radiation and Gowanus toxic waste, which burn it like acid. It screams again in pain and disgust, but Fuck you, you don’t belong here, this city is mine, get out!
To drive this lesson home, I cut the bitch with LIE traffic, long vicious honking lines; and to stretch out its pain, I salt these wounds with the memory of a bus ride to LaGuardia and back. And just to add insult to injury? I backhand its ass with Hoboken, raining the drunk rage of ten thousand dudebros down on it like the hammer of God. Port Authority makes it honorary New York, motherfucker; you just got Jerseyed.
N.K. Jemisin just won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and I highly recommend picking this novel up to see why.
TL;DR: A beautiful, twisty novel with a New York that is simultaneously real and fantastical. Getting to know the personification of each borough is a wonderful journey; you’ll want to fly through this ode to the city that never sleeps in a New York minute. (Sorry, I had to.)
If you liked this, try:
“An Unkindness of Magicians” by Kat Howard (Bookshop | Kindle) (my review here)
“Ninth House” by Leigh Bardugo (Bookshop | Kindle) (Elizabeth’s review)
"Vanishing New York: How A Great City Lost Its Soul” by Jeremiah Moss (Bookshop | Kindle)
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