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
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.
Themes
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.
Themes
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.
Though Paolo says he “didn’t believe it either,” the novel doesn’t reveal exactly what “it” is—or what breathing the avatar is supposed to hear. This vagueness deepens the mystery around Paolo. Meanwhile, the avatar’s assumption that Paolo is trying to buy sex from him suggests that the avatar has been offered money for sex before. As the avatar is young, homeless, and hungry, this detail suggests that poverty and social vulnerability have forced him into exploitative, possibly abusive sexual situations.
Themes
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.
Unexpectedly, the avatar’s attempt to visualize camouflage for himself works—which suggests that, in the novel, thoughts, beliefs, and imagination control reality. The avatar’s fear of the police officer, meanwhile, reminds the reader of the violence and racial profiling that police have inflicted on Black New Yorkers; it implies that police officers abuse their power over Black residents.
Themes
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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.
Here the novel implies that the avatar used to hold a stereotypical belief that only white people could “go to art school”—that only white people could really be artists. By refuting this stereotype, the Black artist who taught the avatar encouraged the avatar’s artistic ambitions. That the avatar paints “breathing-holes” for New York that then allow the city to breathe, meanwhile, suggests that art is as vital to a city’s healthy functioning as breathing is to ordinary living organisms.
Themes
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.
This passage reveals what “it” was that the avatar was supposed to hear: the city’s breathing. A volcanic eruption destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 79 C.E., while Atlantis is a mythological lost city mentioned in the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (400s-300s B.C.E.) and taken up by subsequent writers. By suggesting that these cities died rather than were merely destroyed (or were just fictional), Paolo implies that cities are living things. The avatar’s initial distrust of Paolo suggests that he is a suspicious person—perhaps due to his abuse history, as his own mother threw him out of her house and made him homeless. Yet his reasoning that others’ beliefs affect him even if he doesn’t share those beliefs underlines the importance of belief to reality in the novel.
Themes
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.
This passage reveals that, in the novel, great cities literally are alive. Though Paolo suggests that natural phenomena such as predator-prey relations govern cities’ lifecycles, he also explains that genocide against indigenous peoples killed living cities in the Americas—a detail that hints at importance of human politics and human choices (ethical or unethical) to cities. That the avatar is the city’s “midwife,” meanwhile, partially resolves the mystery of his special relationship to the city. He’s its protector, the person who’s supposed to usher it into its new life, just as a midwife would help a baby into the world.
Themes
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.
The reader does not yet know who the “Enemy” is, but Paolo’s allusion to this person hints at conflict to come. The idea that a city can have “parasites”—a biological term –again underlines that Paolo sees cities as natural organisms rather than as political, legal, or economic entities created by human choices. His claim that the avatar must represent New York City’s entire population, meanwhile, may make the reader worry—can a single person really represent such a diverse population? If he can, can he retain his own individual identity while doing so?
Themes
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.
Due to his dream, New York City’s avatar realizes that Paolo is himself the avatar of São Paolo, the largest city in Brazil (by population). That the avatar sees Paolo as a “sprawling jewel” that nevertheless smells like “cigarette smoke” demonstrate how concepts related to cities (like sprawl) and intimate physical descriptions (the smell of cigarette smoke) mingle in cities’ avatars. That the avatar decides to show Paolo he’s “grateful”—implicitly, by performing some sex act pleasurable to Paolo—may suggest that the avatar enjoys sex and is attracted to Paolo despite his implied abuse history. On the other hand, by linking sex to gratitude, the scene also implies that the avatar views sex as transactional.
Themes
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.
Though the avatar did not touch the woman’s purse, the tourist nevertheless accuses him of stealing it. The reader is left to assume that the tourist blames the avatar because the avatar is a young Black man, and the tourist believes racist stereotypes about Black men’s criminality. Notably, the police officers are already following the avatar when the tourist accuses him—which suggests either that they racially profiled him or (given their peculiar shadows) that something more science-fictional is going on. That police officers are the first “harbingers of the Enemy” the avatar meets, meanwhile, highlights that, in the novel, police officers are antagonistic to the city’s well-being. Finally, the figurative biological language used to explain the city’s reaction to the ”Mega Cop”—“artery,” “white blood cells,” “infection”—underlines that within the world of the novel, cities are living things comparable to biological organisms.
Themes
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.
When the avatar refers to himself as “we,” the reader can’t be sure whether he is referring to all New Yorkers—or some other community that’s yet to be revealed. As the city is not literally a biological organism, meanwhile, the novel leaves open what form the Enemy’s “infection” of it or “foothold” in it will take.
Themes
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.
A pregnant person’s water usually breaks at the beginning of childbirth. When the avatar refers to his “water break[ing],” he’s both indicating that New York City is being born and hinting at his willingness to represent or even embody New Yorkers unlike himself (e.g. those with wombs). That the avatar defeats the Enemy by attacking it with painful concepts highlights, once again, the power of concepts and beliefs to shape reality in the novel.
Themes
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.”
Again, the avatar refers to himself in the plural without making clear which communal “us” he means—New Yorkers as a group or something else. This ambiguity heightens suspense, as does the avatar’s realization that something has gone wrong.
Themes
