The City We Became

“I’m not too tired to imagine myself as nothing, beneath notice, not even worth beating for pleasure.” 

As with the suspicious Whites in the coffee shop, Jemisin pulls no punches about New York City cops. The primary avatar sees every cop as a sadist, looking only to protect the interests of White New Yorkers while taking pleasure in administering punishment for no reason in particular. Jemisin says in her acknowledgments, “I love hip-hop and fear cops because of New York” (437). Good and fair cops obviously exist, but Jemisin seeks to give her readers a glimpse of a world through the eyes of someone whose experience creates a justifiable paranoia.

“Manny’s been in New York for less than an hour and yet he knows, he knows, that cities are organic, dynamic systems. They are built to incorporate newness.”

Jemisin’s novel is as much about the character and soul of cities as it is about their human counterparts. Cities, in her mind, are living, breathing entities; they are born, they live, and they die. As “dynamic systems,” cities also possess a vibrant life energy that can be harnessed in their defense. This knowledge comes fully formed to Manny the moment he is chosen as Manhattan’s avatar.

“God, I can’t wait to see which entire ethnic group they’re going to scapegoat in the wake of this one.”

In the aftermath of the attack on the Williamsburg Bridge, Manny and Bel speculate on who might be responsible. Making a direct allusion to the 9/11 attacks, Bel wonders if political leadership—presumably the “they” he is referring to—will use it as an excuse for xenophobic policies. Jemisin once again takes aim at White society’s tendency to blame and punish people of color for acts of violence while making excuses for similar crimes committed by Whites.

“Even public land, like in a park. It’s just a concept, land ownership; we don’t have to live like this. But this city, in its current form, is built on that concept.” 

When confronted by a host of white tendrils in Inwood Hill Park, Manny desperately searches within himself for something to trigger his power. When he touches the cash in his wallet, he feels a ripple of energy, and he makes the connection between land and economic value, a concept foreign to indigenous Americans in the pre-colonial era, who saw the land as a gift to be shared and nurtured rather than a commodity to be bought and sold.

“And if one tendril has turned a nosy, racist white woman into a conduit for disembodied existential evil, he doesn’t want to see what infected NYPD will become.”

With her finger clearly on the pulse of current events, Jemisin highlights the phenomenon of White people confronting Black people in public spaces under the false assumption that they must be committing a crime. Phones always at the ready to film these encounters, the video inevitably backfires, calling attention to the racism rather than to the supposed crime. Jemisin further speculates on the nightmare scenario if the NYPD, with a notorious history of racial profiling, were to be infected. One White woman can be a nuisance, but an entire police force backed by institutional power can wreak havoc.

“‘Dudes like you—smart, charming, well dressed, and cold enough to strangle you in an alley if we had alleys?’ Manny tries not let her see how much this assessment hurts him. ‘Dime a dozen on Wall Street and at City Hall.’” 

After Manny threatens the meddlesome woman in the park—a threat that shocks both Brooklyn and Bel—Brooklyn sees in him the paradox of high-powered financial types: the smooth exterior masking a win-at-all-costs killer instinct. Recalling Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel, American Psycho, about an investment banker who becomes a serial killer, Brooklyn’s assessment of Manny draws a clear, connecting line between unchecked capitalism and murder.

“Crown Heights, where now the only riots are over seats at brunch.” 

As Brooklyn feels her borough come alive within her newly awakened consciousness, she flips through a mental checklist of its neighborhoods. Crown Heights, which in 1991 saw three days of riots after tensions between Black residents and Hasidic Jews boiled over, is now a placid neighborhood where its residents only jostle over getting good seats at the newest cafe. It speaks to a level of White privilege that the gentrified Crown Heights enjoys enough institutional support and economic prosperity that such riots are a distant memory.

“You’re a good girl, Aislyn, and the city isn’t a place for good people.” 

Aislyn chafes at her father’s assumption that she is too timid to set foot on Manhattan even while her fear is real and debilitating. Her father, Matthew, has filled her head with stories of crime and depravity in the big city, echoing the misplaced assumption of many in smaller towns that cities are little more than crime-infested slums. Matthew’s unequivocal distinction between “bad” cities and “good” suburbs is not only tinged with racist stereotypes and overly simplistic.

“Too many New Yorkers are New York. Its acculturation quotient is dangerously high.” 

In a city as diverse as New York, cultures undergo a constant process of adaptation and assimilation. Successive generations of immigrants adapt more readily to the dominant culture than their first-generation forebears. This cultural mash-up informs and changes the dominant culture in many ways: its food, its art, and the ways in which different cultures view each other. The Woman in White sees this process as problematic and a dilution of cultural purity. She echoes the fears of White supremacists everywhere who see diversity not as an asset but as something to be avoided at all costs.

“Yes. Pleasedtomeetyou is appropriate, yes? We’re both composite entities for whom the boundaries of space, time, and flesh have meaning! Let’s be besties.” 

The Woman in White senses Aislyn may be sympathetic to her cause and she attempts, in her odd, awkward fashion, to strike up a friendship with the new avatar of Staten Island. As an extra-dimensional entity unfamiliar with human social rituals, her overtures take two forms: her weird approximations of casual conversation and her feeding of Aislyn’s fear of dark-skinned people. Jemisin also uses the scene as an opportunity to poke fun at modern social media lingo.

“‘You think becoming whatever we are is changing us,’ he says. ‘Remaking each of us, but in different ways.’”

Manny and Brooklyn discuss their pre-avatar lives, and Brooklyn feels her city is pulling her back into her old identity as MC Free. It’s not who she is anymore, and she’s uncomfortable with using her old identity to channel Brooklyn’s energy. Manny argues that as individuals they have no choice, and that their cities will dictate who they become. Jemisin makes a wry observation about the ways in which cities change us. Standing face-to-face with so much humanity every day forces people to tolerate and empathize with each other. There is little other choice.

“These kinds of people always lie, and attack others, to cover their mediocrity.”

When confronted by art she deems offensive, Bronca imagines the artist’s response—he “looks artfully stunned” (140)—is feigned. He’s playing games with her, but she refuses to let him get the upper hand. Jemisin gives Bronca all the weight in this argument, but at the same time she engages in the same kind of stereotyping that offends her own artistic sensibilities. As it turns out, Bronca’s assumptions are correct but only in hindsight. It’s worth speculating whether Jemisin sees this as a fault or a strength.

“But there’s something weird about the whole group of them, Bronca muses while they work. Well, weirder than a bunch of rich-kid ‘artists’ thinking that a taste for stereotypes and fetish porn make them avant-garde.” 

Bronca has very clear ideas of what constitutes real art and who a true artist is. The Alt Artistes, in her view, are posers, approaching their art without empathy or understanding of their source material. Bronca, however, makes a sweeping generalization about the Artistes’ economic status as well as how they view their own work. It’s likely that Bronca has seen this kind of art—and these kinds of artists—before and, as someone approaching 70 who has lived with institutional racism her whole life, she may be forgiven for making assumptions.

“There’s one sad-looking grocery store in the area that Bronca knows of, but they pass ten payday lenders and dollar stores while she drives, dotting every half-busy thoroughfare like fast-proliferating tumors.” 

As Bronca drives through the Bronx, she notes the results of institutional neglect: a single grocery store but multiple predatory businesses that charge extremely high interest rates for short-term loans. Any system that prioritizes profit over food, Bronca believes, is further evidence of a concerted effort to isolate and marginalize certain neighborhoods. In keeping with her Lovecraftian tropes, she likens this effort to a cancer that has metastasized in communities of color.

“For an instant she is rushing along with the train, is the train: fast, powerful, aching for a coating of graffiti along her sleek-but-boring silver skin—and then she is just herself.” 

As Padmini senses danger in her neighbor’s pool, she rushes to the aid of the young boys playing in the water. Instinctively tapping into the energy of Queens, she flies down the stairs and into her neighbor’s yard with the speed of an express subway train. Jemisin also uses this moment to comment on New York City’s effort to erase the graffiti from its fleet of trains. The graffiti art, Jemisin believes, gave the trains color and character, and cleaning them up is all part of a larger effort to whitewash any signs of cultural diversity from the public space.

“There doesn’t seem to be an instruction manual or a wise old mentor anywhere to help us figure out the rules, but if we keep playing catch-up, it’s going to win, eventually.” 

While Manny, Brooklyn, and Padmini try to understand how to control their newfound power, Jemisin makes a playful reference to one of the most well-worn tropes in fantasy literature: the elder sage who must prepare his apprentice to battle the enemy. From Gandalf to Obi-Wan Kenobi to Albus Dumbledore, this character has become so familiar, it has achieved Jungian archetypal status (Chalquist, Craig. Terrapsychology: Reengaging the Soul of Place. Washington, DC: Spring Journal. 2007).

“I don’t know. I just…I can’t become Queens. I’m not even a US citizen!” 

Manny and Padmini are the two non-native New Yorkers chosen as avatars, and, while Manny accepts his role quickly, Padmini has a harder time. Like many immigrants, she fears losing her status and being deported, but her fear prevents her from seeing the bigger picture. In an age of extreme anti-immigrant sentiment, it’s worth considering how much intellectual and human capital has been lost to deportation or even mere anxieties over deportation.

“The city has taken his name and his past, but only because he was willing to give those up in the first place.” 

One of Jemisin’s recurring themes is that cities are places of reinvention. Manny, trying to move beyond his dark past, is more than willing to let himself be remade. This renovation of his soul takes the literal form of amnesia, but Manny is grateful for the loss. He resists the temptation to look for any clues to his past. He is ready for a new identity, and that willingness to change is a necessary component in reinvention.

“‘Yes, Mama. Five paragraphs, just the way the SAT likes it.’ Singsong boredom. ‘I miss Ms. Fountain, who used to let us write interesting stuff.’” 

While Manny and Padmini shelter inside one of Brooklyn’s brownstones, Brooklyn checks in on her daughter, Jojo, next door. Jojo assures her mother that she has finished her English homework in the prescribed format. Jemisin takes a swipe at that standard bit of compositional pedagogy: the five-paragraph essay. While it can be useful to teach basic rhetorical structure, many critics, Jojo included, find it limiting and restrictive.

“All Bronca’s life, women like this have been the ones to watch out for—‘feminists’ who cried when their racism got called out…” 

Feminists of color have argued that many White feminists prioritize their own privilege over a more unified approach that includes issues of gender and race. Without a more “intersectional” approach—one which encompasses not just gender equality but racial, economic, and sexual identity as well—there is no true feminism. Bronca understands this intersectional argument, viewing with skepticism the Woman in White who offers her a sizable donation in exchange for showing the Alt Artistes’ work. She pegs the woman, with her PhD and her expensive business suit, as just such a privileged feminist.

“She has a gun—illegally, can’t get a permit because of her arrest record for AIM protests and ‘vandalism,’ which is what they call it when artists put murals on derelict building walls.” 

After Bronca’s personal information is posted online—accompanied by threats of violence—she thinks about how to protect herself. Her gun may be an option, but she doesn’t have a permit. Aside from the legal ramifications of using an unlicensed gun even for self-defense, Jemisin addresses the larger issue of what constitutes a crime. She questions whether an artist—or anyone, for that matter—has the legal right to use a building as their personal canvas. She also wonders if all graffiti should be considered artistically valuable. Jemisin doesn’t answer these questions definitively, but instead she lodges a more general protest in favor of artistic freedom.

“Everything that happens everywhere else happens on Staten Island, too, but here people try not to see the indecencies, the domestic violence, the drug use. And then, having denied what’s right in front of their eyes, they tell themselves that at least they’re living in a good place full of good people. At least it’s not the city.” 

Cities have long been viewed as cesspools of crime and debauchery, at least by people who don’t live in them. The sins of cities exist everywhere, but residents of rural or suburban areas are particularly good at not seeing them. The population density of urban areas makes it hard to ignore, but the more open spaces of the country provide more opportunity to conceal those same sins. If a drug addict is shooting up in a suburban home rather than on the street, it’s easy to imagine that it’s not happening, which leads to the assumption that those kinds of people live only in cities. This kind of denial creates an empathy gap, which then leads to fear, distrust, and hate. Matthew is a prime example, sheltering his daughter from the evils of Manhattan while ignoring the xenophobia in his own backyard.

“Imagining a world creates it, if it isn’t already there. That’s the great secret of existence: it’s supersensitive to thought. Decisions, wishes, lies—that’s all you need to create a new universe.” 

Bronca, the avatar with the greatest store of knowledge, explains to the others the nature of multidimensionality. Theoretical physics predicts the existence of multiple dimensions and with them the more practical applications of faster-than-light speeds, wormholes, and time travel. (Warmflash, David. “Three Totally Mind-Bending Implications of a Multidimensional Universe.” Discover. 4 Dec. 2014.) Jemisin weaves those theories directly into her Lovecraftian world. The notion that universes are created on a whim is mind-bending indeed and suggests that they are just as much within us as without.