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
Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, and Veneza are all teleported in front of the Bull of Wall Street. When Bronca checks on Veneza, Veneza expresses horror at the strange reality, halfway between ours and the Woman in White’s, where the Woman was keeping her. Padmini asks whether they’ve permanently lost the fight against the Woman, now that Aislyn has betrayed them. Bronca snarks that Aislyn’s unique skill is “magic xenophobia” and then asks where Hong is. None of them know where Aislyn sent him.
The Bull of Wall Street is a statue near the southern tip of Manhattan. That Aislyn sent the others back to Manhattan suggests that she subconsciously associates Manhattan more closely with non-Staten Island New York City than she does any of the other boroughs. When Bronca calls Aislyn’s Staten Island concept of belonging “magic xenophobia,” it illustrates that concepts like belonging can bring communities together, but those concepts can also be used to exclude and marginalize those not considered part of the community.
Themes
Spying her car next to the Bull, Bronca says she’ll drive them to City Hall. Padmini protests that it’s pointless to let New York City’s avatar devour them without Staten Island. Brooklyn says she’s going—she refuses to admit defeat, even if Padmini does. Padmini, realizing that finding the avatar is their best chance to save the city, mournfully agrees to come with them. Brooklyn calls one of her employees and arranges for Transit Museum staff to let them into City Hall Station.
Bronca, Brooklyn, and Padmini ultimately decide to sacrifice their lives to save New York City even though they’re not sure the sacrifice will even work. Their utilitarian logic in this case—sacrifice a few for the chance of saving many—is at odds with the way they shrugged off the devastating effects of cities’ births on other dimensions. If they were truly committed to sacrificing a smaller number of lives to save greater, they might agree with the Woman in White that preventing cities from being born was preferable to killing neighboring dimensions and all their inhabitants. The inconsistencies in the embodied boroughs’ ethical reasoning suggest that they don’t have a consistent ethical outlook—and may be privileging the lives of humans over those of intelligent aliens because they belong to a human community and do not see alien lives as valuable in the same way.
Themes
On the way, Bronca sees many structures made of tendrils. Veneza tells Bronca the Woman in White is an extradimensional city avatar, trying to bring her city into our reality on top of New York, and points out a subtle shadow dimming the sun over the city. She urges Bronca and the others to act quickly.
Figuratively, gentrification turns a city into a different place by uprooting locals and replacing small businesses with global ones. The novel literalizes the idea that gentrification turns a city into a different place by having the Woman in White, who has weaponized gentrification against New York, bring a different city down on top of it.
Themes
The Transit Museum director meets Bronca, Veneza, Padmini, and Brooklyn at an entrance to the derelict subway station, where he gives them his flashlight and the keys. Inside, they find the tendril-infected subway train, destroyed. Paolo appears and asks whether Staten Island has joined them. Brooklyn is explaining how the Woman in White corrupted Staten Island when she sees Manny sitting with his back to the wall, naked and bloody. When Paolo asks whether Staten Island understands what she’s doing by allying with the Woman, Padmini says she does and that they lost Hong when Staten Island banished them.
In this scene, all appears lost for the embodied boroughs. Although Manny has successfully protected New York City’s avatar against the tendril-infected train, the New York City community has lost an apparently irreplaceable part with Aislyn’s defection.
Themes
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Manny, helped up by Padmini, suggests they try anyway. They all walk toward the sleeping avatar. Manny tries to touch the avatar again, but an invisible wall again stops his hand. Bronca, Padmini, and Brooklyn all try too—and all are stopped by the invisible wall. Through the skylight, Bronca sees the shadow over the city thicken. They’re discussing how the Woman in White’s city will destroy our universe when Veneza interrupts. When they look at her, she’s covered in sweat, and then suddenly they see her as part of a city. Paolo announces that cities are defined by their inhabitants’ beliefs rather than by political structures or borders. He grabs Veneza and drags her toward New York City’s avatar.
Throughout the novel, Veneza has seemed special: she can see the tendrils when most ordinary people can’t, and she has a loving relationship to New York City and to the Bronx’s avatar, Bronca. Yet Veneza is from New Jersey and thus, technically, not a New Yorker. Now Paolo seems to be suggesting that Veneza being from New Jersey doesn’t matter, because her beliefs—and not on which side of a state line she resides—determine which communities she belongs to.
Themes
Bronca, welcoming Veneza into the circle of boroughs around New York City’s avatar, explains to her that people from Jersey City always claim to be from New York City, which is reasonable since Jersey City’s closer to Manhattan than Staten Island. She asks Veneza who she is, and Veneza replies that she’s Jersey City. When Manny asks the others, “who are we?”, the avatar begins to glow, opens his eyes, and says, “We’re New York.”
Veneza believes herself and her part of the New York metropolitan area—Jersey City—to really be New York. Because, in the novel, beliefs shape reality, Veneza is able to become New York City’s fifth avatar, replacing Aislyn. With five embodied boroughs present, New York City’s avatar is able to wake up.
Themes
In cityspace, New York’s avatar, Manny, Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, and Veneza use New York concepts such as city noise, “sewer fire,” Wall Street employees, muggers, and “helicopter parents” to attack the Woman in White’s infection everywhere they find it. The Woman has transferred too much of herself from her own reality to retreat entirely, but New York City’s avatars are destroying her, and so she uses Staten Island as an “anchor” to save herself. Meanwhile, the rest of New York City is freed of her.
New York City cannot completely purge itself of the Woman in White’s presence, because one of its boroughs—Staten Island—has completely succumbed to her manipulations, welcomed her in, and rejected the rest of the city. Yet just as the Woman in White weaponized gentrification against the city, so the city’s avatars are able to weaponize gentrification’s opposite—authentically New York phenomena and people—to contain the Woman to Staten Island.
Themes
