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Summary
Themes
and Colors
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
A first-person narrator (later revealed to be New York City’s avatar), wearing unwashed jeans because he doesn’t have another pair, stands on a New York City rooftop at dawn and sings a wordless song: “I sing the city.” He hears a strange echo and a “growl” that reminds him of police sirens, which he dislikes.
The first-person narrator in this section does not receive a name. Instead, the novel identifies him by his relationship with New York City. The narrator’s lack of name suggests that an intense relationship with a community, such as a city, might undermine or threaten an individual person’s identity, as represented by a unique name. The narrator’s claim that he “sing[s] the city” echoes the famous first line of Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem in Latin about the founding of Rome written during the first century BCE: “Arma virumque cano,” or, in English, “Arms and the man I sing.” By alluding to an ancient epic poem about the founding of Rome in its first scene, the novel implicitly argues that New York City is as deserving of its own epic literature as Rome. Moreover, by centering song and literary allusion, the novel hints that art is somehow important to cities. Finally, the narrator’s dislike of police sirens hints that although police are often city employees, they may be antagonists in this novel about cities.
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Later, the avatar is in a café with Paolo. Because Paolo is “not-white” and the avatar is Black, other patrons stare at them suspiciously. Paolo is trying to explain to the avatar how “things are supposed to work.” The avatar muses that he’s never seen Paolo eat. Devouring his own food, he also notes Paolo’s accent and aura of being “way older” than he looks.
The suspicious stares that the avatar and Paolo receive because they aren’t white reveal that the other patrons are likely racist white people in a predominantly white area of the city. These people may be suspicious of the avatar and Paolo due to negative stereotypes they hold about non-white men. In contrast with the other patrons’ stereotypical thinking, the avatar carefully observes Paolo as an individual person: Paolo’s (lack of) eating habits, his accent, and his age. The avatar’s observation that Paolo seems “way older” than he looks hints at Paolo’s mysterious background.
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Paolo demands to know whether the avatar is listening. He tells the avatar that he “didn’t believe it either” until someone named Hong took him to the sewers to show him “the growing roots, the budding teeth.” He says he had noticed breathing all his life but didn’t realize it was unusual. He tells the avatar to listen, puts 20 dollars on the table, though he’s paid for breakfast, and tells the avatar to meet him in the same café on Thursday. The avatar, musing that he would have slept with Paolo for breakfast or for free, takes the money and asks whether Paolo has a place. Paolo again tells the avatar to listen and leaves.
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The avatar is finishing his sandwich and fantasizing about having a place to sleep with food in it when a police officer enters the café. The avatar visualizes “mirrors around [his own] head” that repels the officer’s eyes. To the avatar’s surprise, his mirror trick keeps the officer from noticing him, though he is the only Black person in the café. The avatar leaves.
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On a roof at night, the avatar is painting a mural of an open throat with salvaged materials. He recalls that when he was in school, a Black artist visited once a week to give lessons about “shit that white people go to art school to learn.” This Black artist made the avatar believe he himself could be an artist. When the avatar finishes his painting, the throat seems to begin breathing. He thinks that Paolo was telling the truth, shouts in celebration, and paints “breathing-holes” all over New York until he has no more paint.
Next Thursday at the café, Paolo notes that the avatar has begun “hearing it” and that the “city is breathing easier.” Yet he warns the avatar that unless the avatar learns from Paolo, the city will die like “Pompeii and Atlantis” and kill the avatar with it. The avatar initially doesn’t believe Paolo’s stories, since Paolo is telling them to the avatar, a kid whose mother threw him out, apparently for religious reasons. But the avatar reasons that if God can affect his life when he doesn’t believe in God, what Paolo is saying can affect his life even if he doesn’t believe Paolo. He asks Paolo to teach him.
Paolo teaches the avatar that “great cities” are living organisms. There used to be several in the Americas, but genocide against indigenous peoples killed those cities. New Orleans was almost born but for some reason failed. Now New York City is being born—and “as in any other part of nature,” cities have predators. The avatar is the “midwife” supposed to protect New York during its birth.
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The avatar and Paolo go to Paolo’s apartment. The avatar uses Paolo’s shower and eats his food while Paolo smokes. Paolo warns the avatar about the “harbingers of the Enemy […] among the city’s parasites” and tells him that the city has selected him to represent its entire diverse population.
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The avatar falls asleep on Paolo’s couch and dreams that an underwater monster approaches the Hudson to attack him, but that another entity—a “sprawling jewel” that smells like “familiar cigarette smoke”—warns the monster away. The avatar wakes up, whispers “São Paolo,” climbs into bed with Paolo, and demonstrates that he’s “grateful.” Then he leaves.
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The avatar goes to a library—he likes libraries because you can stay in them indefinitely unless you do something objectionable—and reads. When he leaves, he sees two police officers on the street whose shadows are moving unnaturally. They begin following the avatar. When he flees, tourists block his way. One accuses him of snatching a woman’s purse. The avatar runs, feeling the officers—“harbingers of the Enemy”—coming after him. He hides in an alley. The officers’ bodies, fused into a huge mass, enter the alley. To escape this “Mega Cop,” the avatar sprints across FDR Drive. FDR Drive is the city’s “artery,” the cars its “white blood cells,” and the Mega Cop an “infection,” so the avatar crosses safely while the Mega Cop is run over repeatedly and destroyed.
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The avatar feels some force tugging him in the direction of New York City’s center. He sees pieces of the Mega Cop and thinks: “I want it gone. We want it gone.” Without knowing how it happened, he finds himself teleported to Central Park. He realizes that Paolo’s stories were accurate, and the Enemy will use the infection that the Mega Cop represents to gain a ”foothold” in New York.
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The avatar thinks, “my water breaks”—and then clarifies that he means water mains. He feels physical transformations suggestive of becoming a city. In the distance he senses São Paolo, Paris, Lagos, and other living cities watching him. As New York City is born, the Enemy manifests in human reality to attack. Its tentacle breaks the Williamsburg Bridge, but the avatar attacks it with painful New York concepts such as “the memory of a bus ride to LaGuardia and back” and drives the Enemy away.
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Exultantly, the avatar thinks the Enemy will be hesitant to attack again. Then he thinks: “Me. Us. Yes.” He sees Paolo coming and has a vision of Paolo as a city. Paolo congratulates the avatar, who celebrates until he realizes “something’s wrong.”
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