Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The City We Became, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cities and Gentrification
Community, Diversity, and Prejudice
Ethics and Nature
Beliefs, Concepts, and Stereotypes
Art
Abuse
Summary
Analysis
Madison deposits Manny and Paolo at the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stop. Manny expects trouble when he sees police, some infected by tendrils, at the entrance; he hears them talking about a bomb threat. Yet the uninfected ranking officer insists the others let Manny and Paolo through, apparently mistaking them for Con Ed engineers. After Manny and Paolo enter the station, Paolo explains: “Those who would help protect the city see what they need to see.”
From the beginning, the novel has represented police officers as false defenders of the city who abuse their power and enforce racism. Now, however, a police officer “who would help protect the city” gives crucial aid to Manny and Paolo. The novel, by violating the pattern of racist, abusive police officers that it itself has constructed, shows the limits of conceptual and stereotypical thinking in predicting how different people will behave (in this case, individual police officers).
Themes
Once Manny and Paolo reach the platform, they find a vacant, conductor-less train. Entering the train, Manny asks Paolo whether they should wait. Paolo asks whether waiting will make the train move. Realizing Paolo is trying, gently, to prove a point, Manny senses New York City’s avatar, touches the subway car, and remembers his last subway ride. The train’s doors shut and it begins to move.
Earlier, Manny mentioned having greater trouble channeling conceptual power than the other embodied boroughs, who have reliable techniques (e.g. Brooklyn uses music; Padmini uses math). Here Paolo is teaching him to actively channel conceptual power—in this case, the power in the concept of “subway”—to help find New York City’s avatar.
Themes
The train takes them to the darkened City Hall Station platform. When Manny and Paolo disembark, Manny turns on his phone flashlight and leads the way. Paolo warns him that the Enemy will have spied on their journey and now knows whether New York City’s avatar is. Manny finds a stairwell whose ceiling is tiled with Guastavino tiles and takes the stairs up. He finds the avatar sleeping on newspapers, senses his power, and immediately tries to touch him—only to find an invisible barrier preventing him.
Bronca was correct that New York City’s avatar was sleeping in a location with Guastavino tiles, a detail that emphasizes the importance of understanding a city’s art and architecture to fully understanding and loving that city. Manny’s failure to touch New York City’s avatar suggests that one borough isn’t enough—the entire community of boroughs needs to come together to wake the avatar.
Themes
When Paolo asks Manny whether he wants to get eaten that badly, Manny concedes he didn’t think of that but insists that he and New York City’s avatar belong to each other. Paolo says he’s jealous of the embodied borough’s community, since São Paolo’s birth was solitary. Manny asks whether Paolo knew New York City’s avatar before his unconsciousness. Paolo says yes. Manny, imagining New York City’s avatar left alone like Paolo, internally apologizes to him for how the boroughs’ deaths will isolate him.
This passage acknowledges an oddity about the living cities: although each avatar represents a community, they do so alone. Their only true peers are other living cities’ avatars—who presumably live, for obvious reasons, in different cities than they do. This logical oddity—and the loneliness the living cities suffer—suggests that there’s something wrong or incomplete about each city having only one avatar.
Themes
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Manny asks Paolo what New York City’s avatar is like. Paolo, smiling, describes the avatar as prideful and angry, scared but brave, and full of enough self-love to realize there’s more to him “than whatever superficialities strangers see and dismiss.” Manny, regretting he’ll die and not get to live in the city, tells Paolo he’ll need the other boroughs to touch the avatar. Paolo says that they’ll have to wait for Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, and Hong to succeed. When Manny expresses distaste for Hong, Paolo defends him, explaining that before embodying Hong Kong, Hong saw a lot of people die in the Opium Wars—and, after, saw a lot of other cities die as well.
Paolo’s description of New York City’s avatar as recognizing more in himself “than whatever superficialities strangers see and dismiss” suggests that resisting stereotype is inherent to New Yorkers’ group identity. The First Opium War (1839 – 1842) and Second Opium War (1856 – 1860) were fought between China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing, and the U.K. (France fought alongside the U.K. in the Second Opium War). Paolo is revealing that Hong has suffered world-historical traumas both as an ordinary human and as a city.
Themes
Realizing Hong must be about 200, Manny asks whether embodied cities are immortal. Paolo explains that cities’ avatars survive as long as their cities do, if another city avatar doesn’t kill them. Manny asks whether the Woman in White could kill them. Paolo admits she probably could and expresses hope that the other cities will finally realize something strange has been going on. When Manny asks whether lots of cities die at birth, Paolo says that more have been dying recently—which supports the theory that the Woman has been sabotaging cities before their births.
After Paolo explains that city avatars can kill other city avatars, Manny asks whether the Woman in White could kill a city avatar too—which reminds the reader that neither Paolo nor Manny yet knows the Woman in White is, herself, a living city. As they seek to save New York City’s avatar, they lack important information that might help them understand the reality they’ve been experiencing.
Themes
Manny asks about São Paolo’s birth. Paolo says it occurred when Brazil’s U.S.-supported military dictatorship planned to demolish São Paolo’s favelas. Because Paolo lived in a São Paolo favela, the city selected him as its avatar. (Manny realizes, based on his knowledge of Brazil’s military coup, that Paolo is 70 or 80.) Paolo tells Manny how he defeated the Enemy’s minions by shooting them with a rocket launcher. Noting Paolo’s capacity for violence, Manny suspects that Paolo, like Manny himself, harmed others before he became an avatar and wonders whether São Paolo chose Paolo because Paolo decided to change his ways.
Brazil’s military dictatorship lasted from 1964 to 1985. That São Paolo chose Paolo as a gesture of resistance against the Brazilian dictatorship’s plans for the city illustrates that cities may have different agendas than the countries of which they are a part—and that a community’s government may not represent its authentic identity. In wondering whether Paolo decided to change his ways before becoming an avatar, Manny may be implicitly wondering whether Manhattan chose him despite his violent ways or because of them.
Themes
Suddenly, Manny hears strange mechanical noises, growing louder. He realizes the train must be moving, though it’s vacant and without power. Manny realizes he needs to think of “a construct to channel the city’s power,” but he’s suddenly unable to think of anything.
The sudden danger in this passage acutely dramatizes Manny’s need to more predictably use concepts to summon power, the way Brooklyn does with music and Padmini does with math.
Themes
Meanwhile, Aislyn wakes up, hearing yelling outside her house. She knows Matthew is working, Conall is gone, and Kendra has drunk herself nearly unconscious. In her yard Aislyn finds a “maybe Japanese” man holding a red envelope “like a shuriken from one of the anime shows Aislyn used to watch” (Hong), an elderly “Mexican-looking” woman (Bronca), a Black woman whom Aislyn thinks she’s seen before with dirt on her suit (Brooklyn), and a young Indian woman (Padmini). The Woman in White is hovering in the air above them. Aislyn notices other creatures in her peripheral vision but refuses to look at them.
That Kendra drinks herself unconscious implies the toll her sacrificed artistic dreams and emotionally abusive husband have taken on her mental health. Aislyn’s inaccurate guesses of Hong and Bronca’s ethnicities reminds readers of her limited, fearful interactions with people of other races, while her refusal to look directly at the Woman in White’s shadow creatures highlights Aislyn’s refusal to perceive the Woman’s manipulative, controlling behavior toward her.
Themes
The Woman in White apologizes for waking Aislyn up. Suddenly Aislyn recognizes Brooklyn (Thomason) as Brooklyn (the borough), Bronca as the Bronx, and Padmini as Queens. She’s sure Hong is a city—but not Manhattan. When she notices Hong’s “foreign foot” trampling her garden, she gets furious: “It is as if Conall has broken a dam within her, and now every bit of fury she has ever suppressed over thirty years just needs the barest hair trigger to explode.” She demands the other avatars get off her lawn, and an energy wave throws Brooklyn, Bronca, Padmini, and Hong into the street. The Woman claps.
Aislyn misdirects her rage at Conall’s assault on Hong because his “foreign foot” touched her plants—or, in other words, because her preexisting xenophobia makes her comfortable expressing rage at non-white and foreign men. Contrary to Bronca’s earlier claims, then, abuse victims don’t merely need to fight in order to end their abusers—they need to fight the right people and direct their rage at the right targets.
Themes
Padmini, getting up, demands to know why Aislyn would attack them. Aislyn says she doesn’t know them, and they were in her yard. When Brooklyn says Aislyn must know who they—and the Woman in White—are, Aislyn insists the Woman is her friend. Padmini calls Aislyn “crazy” and demands to know whether Aislyn knows what the Woman plans to do. Aislyn, whose father Matthew frequently calls her (and women in general) crazy, reacts with anger that she doesn’t allow herself to show to her father. She tells them that the Woman’s acting out of necessity and that in the Woman’s reality, “people try to be decent.”
Again, Aislyn misdirects her rage at her father’s sexism onto Padmini; due to racism and internalized sexism, she feels comfortable contradicting a non-white, female stranger but can’t make herself stand up to her father. Her application of her father’s mantra about Staten Island—that “people try to be decent” there—to the Woman’s reality shows that Aislyn has repressed her epiphanies that Staten Island’s decency is a facade, and that the Woman is an alien entity. Instead, she chooses to conceptualize the Woman and her reality as basically similar to Aislyn and Aislyn’s own reality.
Themes
When Aislyn sees the other boroughs’ incomprehension, she thinks that while she once longed to join the city, now she wants to reject them. Aislyn snaps that maybe “the rest of the city” should be destroyed.
Aislyn already assumed that the other boroughs wouldn’t care about her, because her father’s emotional abuse has convinced her she’s worthless. Now she is taking their understandable shock about her allegiance to the Woman in White as a rejection of her—and decides, petulantly, to reject them in turn. Her exclamation that maybe “the rest of the city” deserves to be destroyed shows that she still hasn’t grasped the full implications of the Woman in White’s mission: the Woman intends to destroy the entire city, even if she saves Staten Island for last.
Themes
Brooklyn tells Aislyn that Brooklyn’s daughter (Jojo) won’t die because of Aislyn. Brooklyn and Bronca move to take Aislyn with them by force. Aislyn is sputtering at them that her father’s a police officer when the Woman in White blocks Brooklyn and Bronca’s way and summons a doorway. Through the doorway, Aislyn sees a young woman unconscious and covered in slime a cave. Bronca calls out, “Veneza?” The Woman says that if they want Veneza back safe, they’ll leave Aislyn alone.
That Aislyn would threaten the embodied boroughs trying to save New York City with her abusive father illustrates how badly Aislyn has confused those who hurt her with those who’ll help her; it also, once again, associates police officers with destructive behavior toward the city rather than with defending it. That the Woman in White uses Veneza as a valuable hostage, meanwhile, suggests that Veneza is a true, valued member of the embodied boroughs’ community in a way that Aislyn is not.
Themes
Hong points out that the Woman in White will destroy the city. The Woman says yes, but she’ll be “civilized” and cause as little pain as possible while destroying our reality—she’ll even create a mini-universe where some humans can live out their lifespans. Bronca tells the Woman not to call herself civilized while planning to murder everyone.
Bronca’s implied belief that certain actions cannot be conducted in a “civilized” way—that they are definitionally not “civilized”—suggests that some projects or goals are so evil that people should never attempt them, no matter their reasons or how they might try to mitigate the evil effects.
Themes
When Padmini reacts with disgust to Veneza’s cave, Aislyn realizes it’s a mouth, belonging to the “Ding Ho,” which may eat Veneza. Padmini, Bronca, and Brooklyn prepare to attack the Woman. Aislyn, convinced the Woman in White is her “only friend,” wills Padmini, Bronca, Brooklyn, and Hong away.
Earlier, Aislyn associated the monster now holding Veneza in its mouth with a snack cake. Her conceptual confusion underlines how badly she has misperceived her situation: she thinks that the manipulative, controlling Woman in White is her “only friend” while wanting the people who ought to be her fellow community members to leave.
Themes
Back in the subway station, Manny and Paolo see a train covered in tendrils approaching. Suddenly, a mouth opens in the train’s front. Manny begins to physically transform, his voice deepening, muscles enlarging, and skin sprouting fur until—thinking he should watch classier New York films—he becomes King Kong and attacks the train.
In the original 1933 King Kong film, the eponymous giant gorilla Kong kills a number of monsters to protect a beautiful actress, Ann Darrow, with whom he has fallen in love. In this passage, New York City’s avatar is playing the role of Ann Darrow, the damsel in distress. Manny’s throwaway thought that he should watch better movies reminds readers that art is important because it furnishes people with the concepts we use to understand our lives—concepts that may be helpful or may be stereotypical and silly.
Themes
Back at Aislyn’s, Aislyn screams at Bronca, Padmini, Brooklyn, and Hong that they don’t “belong.” An energy wave powered by the Staten Island concept of belonging banishes Bronca, Padmini, Brooklyn, Hong, their car, the shadow creatures, and the Ding Ho. Because Aislyn wasn’t intending to banish the Woman in White, she remains. She lands beside Aislyn and asks whether they’re friends. Aislyn agrees. The Woman touches Aislyn. Aislyn feels a “sting,” and the Woman reacts with triumph. While Aislyn feels comforted that a city—not New York, but still, a city—is her friend, more of the Woman’s tendrils grow all over Staten Island.
By claiming that the other embodied boroughs (and Hong) don’t “belong” and banishing them, Aislyn definitively isolates herself and Staten Island from the rest of New York City’s community. The ”sting” that Aislyn feels when the Woman in White next touches her implies that the Woman has finally succeeded in infecting Aislyn with a tendril—perhaps because Aislyn has rejected the city whose essence was protecting her.
Themes
