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Chapter 1
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 drives Manny to his new apartment in Innwood. As she’s dropping him off, she tells him the Checker cab “likes” him—it drives better with him in it. Manny says in that case, he’ll call her if he has to fight another monster. Madison suggests he call her, period. Though Manny thinks Madison is pretty, he turns her down—he’s not sure of his own motives for doing so. Madison, unoffended, leaves with a smile.
Manny’s very presence improves how the Checker cab drives; since a Checker cab is a quintessential New York taxi, Manny’s improvement of it suggests that not only does he derive power from New York objects, they derive power from him. His lack of surety about why he turned down Madison, meanwhile, reiterates how little he knows himself now that the city has taken his memory.
Themes
Manny’s apartment building is old, with a front garden, a corniced foyer, and an “ancient” gated elevator. Manny recognizes none of it, though he found the address on his phone. He rides the elevator to the top floor. When he disembarks, the hallway undergoes a metamorphosis, from a creepy ambience like “a survival horror video game” to something “safer.” Manny finds the change odd but accepts it.
Just as the Checker cab drives better with Manny in it, so his apartment building changes from a “survival horror video game” environment—something truly disturbing, in other words—to a “safer” environment. Thus this passage emphasizes that even as New York City gives Manny power, Manny’s presence somehow improves the city’s wellbeing.
Themes
Manny knocks on his new apartment’s door. His roommate, a “lanky Asian guy” with an English accent, opens it. Apologetically, Manny tells the roommate he can no longer remember the roommate’s name. The roommate reminds Manny that it’s Bel Nguyen and that they’re both Ph.D. students at Columbia in “political theory.” Manny tells Bel he had a “fainting spell” on the train, which has scrambled his memory. He apologizes if he forgets things and repeats himself—and tells Bel that he may have already shared his nickname, Manny.
That Manny is a Ph.D. student at Columbia—a very well-regarded Ivy League university—implies he’s an academically successful intellectual. It does not provide many clues, however, as to what was so incompatible with New York City in Manny’s previous identity that entering the city gave him amnesia.
Themes
Bel suggests that they go for a walk, which might help with Manny’s discombobulation. Manny agrees. They go to Inwood Hill Park. Realizing he knows “general facts,” though not personal memories, Manny recalls the park contains Manhattan’s last old-growth forest. Bel says that he wanted to live in Inwood because of the forest. He has fond memories of visiting “Hackfall Wood in North Yorkshire” near his grandmother’s house—till she rejected him when he came out as trans. Manny says he’s sorry and registers he had forgotten Bel was trans. Bel, seeing Manny register it, asks him whether he wants to back out of being roommates. Manny says that if he did, he’d make up a better lie than amnesia—which makes Bel laugh.
Manny’s amnesia only affected his “personal memories,” not his knowledge of impersonal facts—a revelation that further underscores the incompatibility of his previous personal identity with his new communal identity as a New Yorker. Hackfall Wood is a large, protected woodland in northern England; along with Bel’s British accent, his childhood memories of Hackfall Wood firmly establish that he is not a native New Yorker. Finally, Manny’s casual reaction to Bel being trans suggests that Manny is not bigoted against trans people—that he is comfortable with gender diversity.
Themes
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Bel mentions Manny seems “different” than when they met over videocall. He was nervous about Manny, because some “queer cis blokes are just as ready to kick my arse” as heterosexual people are, and the old Manny seemed like an “arse-kicker.” Manny assures Bel he has no problem with Bel’s gender identity.
While Madison assumed that Manny was attracted to women, Bel assumes that Manny is “queer.” These assumptions may be compatible—Manny could be bisexual, for example—but they also serve as another example of people assuming they know something about Manny’s identity that Manny hasn’t actually told them. Bel’s sense that pre-amnesia Manny was an “arse-kicker,” meanwhile, hints that perhaps New York City decided to take Manny’s identity because he wasn’t a very nice person.
Themes
Manny and Bel hear ambulances driving past the park toward the day’s disasters. Bel wonders “which entire ethnic group” will be blamed. Manny suggests the culprit may be yet another white man. Bel says: “A ‘lone wolf’ with mental health issues, right!” Disgustedly, he says they have to wish for that so the tragedy isn’t used to target non-white people.
This passage alludes to a real-world example of stereotypes shaping peoples’ perceptions of the world around them: due to racism, when a non-white person commits an act of mass violence, that person’s “entire ethnic group” comes under suspicion—whereas when a white person commits an act of mass violence, no one assumes that white people are inherently violent.
Themes
Manny and Bel come upon a plaque claiming Peter Minuit bought Manhattan on this site for items “worth about 60 guilders” from the indigenous population. Bel notes that this is where Manny’s “ancestors began the whole business of stealing the country.” He asks Manny whether he wants to check out the commemorative rock. Manny, who has an intuition that the rock matters, agrees. When they reach it, the rock—named Shorakkopoch—strikes Manny as symbolically powerful, like the umbrella and the cab. Bel mentions that as monuments go, the rock seems “cheap.” This word strikes Manny as evocative.
Previously, the novel has hinted that New York City may have taken Manny’s memory because there was something unsuitable—perhaps violent—about his identity before he came to the city. By reminding the reader of the city’s violent history (European colonists like Peter Minuit, a Dutch-affiliated trader, took the land from its original inhabitants by guile or force), the novel prompts the reader to wonder whether the city would find Manny’s past identity unsuitable merely because he had been violent. The city’s violent history may also prompt the reader to wonder whether the existence of living cities is a good thing.
Themes
A white woman in business clothes walks up to Manny and Bel, recording them on her phone. She threatens to call the police and calls them “druggie perverts.” Manny sees a tendril attached to the back of the woman’s neck and has an intense mental reaction: “Cordyceps, puppet strings, drinking straw, and more coherently, That thing on FDR Drive!”
The white woman’s harassment of Manny and Bel recalls real-world incidents in which white people have called the police on non-white people doing ordinary things in public: because Manny and Bel are non-white, and possibly because they present as LGBTQ, she stereotypes them as “druggie perverts.” The tendril attached to the woman’s neck as she harasses Manny and Bel implies a connection between the tendrils—which up to this point in the novel have seemed like totally alien entities—and human bigotry. Manny’s reaction suggests various interpretations of the tendrils. Comparing the tendril to Cordyceps—a genus of fungus, many of which are parasitic—suggests the tendril is a parasite on the woman. Comparing it to puppet strings suggests that the tendril is controlling the woman’s behavior. Finally, comparing it to a drinking straw suggests that some other entity is using the tendril as a utensil to consume the woman.
Themes
Manny demands the creature reveal its true self. The woman freezes, and her clothes and hair turn white. When she (the Woman in White) speaks, her voice has deepened. She admits she was getting tired of faking ignorance and calls Bel “São Paolo.” Manny intuits that the tendril is helping some other creature control the woman’s body. The Woman examines Bel and asks whether he’s “something else, underneath that covering.” When Bel responds with offense, she tells him she “mistook [him] for fifteen million other people.” To Manny, she says she thought she’d hurt him and then observes he smells wrong—too clean.
Manny believes that the tendril allows the Woman in White—whatever she is—to possess the bigoted white woman’s body. This suggests that the tendrils represent outside control and manipulation. The Woman in White’s odd behavior underlines her status as an outsider, an intruder, among humans. She mistakes Bel for São Paolo and Manny for New York City’s avatar, which suggests she has trouble telling human beings apart. When she asks Bel whether he’s “something else, underneath that covering,” Bel’s offended response suggests that he thinks she’s making a transphobic remark about his biological sex. Her response—that she confused him with “fifteen million other people”—suggests that she has wholly different, inhuman concerns and prejudices than the bigoted woman she is possessing.
Themes
Manny speculates the woman’s possession by the tendril is what happened to people who touched the growth on FDR. He asks the Woman in White what she is. Noting his brevity, she asks where his “shit-talking” went. Manny tells her they haven’t met. The Woman insists they have, notes Manny isn’t injured, and asks whether his body has changed. Bel says Manny’s name and asserts the Woman is crazy. Hearing the name, she says: “Manhattan.”
The Woman in White’s strange assumptions continue to characterize her as an intruder in New York City and, indeed, the human world. When she eventually realizes that New York City’s avatar and Manny have different bodies, she at first assumes that the avatar somehow switched bodies rather than that he and Manny are not the same person. Yet at the same time, she does seem to have some familiarity with human culture—after all, she understands the concept of “shit-talking.”
Themes
Sensing the Woman in White is dangerous, Manny decides to keep her distracted with talk. He asks whether he killed her on FDR. She tells him that the tendril growth on FDR was a “toehold” that remained after her fight with a “vicious” opponent. Manny’s attack came too late—she had already infected many cars, which spread the infection throughout the area.
Because the reader does not know exactly what sort of entity the Woman in White is, it’s hard to know whether to interpret the word “toehold” literally or figuratively here. That is, are the tendril growths part of the Woman in White’s extended body, or are they a kind of technology that she uses? Whatever the answer, her boast that cars have already spread her infection throughout the city reminds the reader how quickly people, diseases, and (figuratively) ideas can circulate in a densely packed urban environment.
Themes
The Woman in White tells Manny he’s “part of that other one” and must have four counterparts. While the man she fought (the avatar) is the “heart,” Manny and the others are “heads and limbs.” Manny realizes the woman is arguing he embodies Manhattan and that other embodied boroughs exist. He asks the woman what she wants. She admits it would be “sporting” to tell him but says this isn’t sport—it’s a “job” for her.
Previously, the novel has used the metaphor of a “living organism” to describe the community a city creates. Now, talking about Manny, New York City’s avatar, and the other embodied boroughs, the novel (via the Woman in White) uses the metaphor of different parts of the same body. Notably, the Woman in White’s metaphor implies a hierarchy within the community in a way that the “living organism” metaphor does not: a body can survive without limbs, but not without a heart or a head. The Woman in White’s claim that she is doing a “job,” meanwhile, suggests both that she takes her mysterious task in New York City seriously and that someone else may have (figuratively or literally) “hired” her to do it.
Themes
The woman jerks and her clothes regain color. She begins recording Manny and Bel on her phone again. Manny, noticing tendrils are growing from the pavement but not around the memorial rock, tugs Bel toward it. The woman calls the police and tells them Manny and Bel are drug dealers having public sex. She identifies them as “African American. Or maybe Hispanic?.” Bel protests he’s “British Asian, you stupid bint!”
That the tendrils are growing everywhere but around the memorial rock hints that there is something special or powerful about the rock. Meanwhile, the woman’s ludicrous accusation—that Manny and Bel are both dealing drugs and having public sex—underlines the absurdity of racist stereotyping. Her recourse to the police, meanwhile, implies that the police serve not real victims (in this situation, Manny and Bel) but people with more social privilege (in this case, a white woman of the business class). Bel’s protest that the woman has correctly identified neither his nationality nor his ethnicity underlines how out of touch with reality the woman’s stereotypes are.
Themes
Manny sees that the tendrils are growing long enough to reach him and Bel. Noting that the rock is the “site of the first real estate swindle” in New York City, he tries to figure out how to use its symbolic power. First, he demands Bel’s wallet. Searching his own wallet, he avoids looking at his ID because “he needs to be Manhattan.” When he finds his credit cards, he realizes the concept “land ownership” built New York City in its current state. He throws a five-dollar bill at the tendrils—and the bill forces the tendrils to retreat.
The novel has set up New York City’s avatar and Manny as protagonists and so encouraged the reader to root for them. Yet they both embody New York City, in whole or in part—and this passage suggests that New York City derives power from an unethical history (a “real estate swindle,” i.e., the dispossession of Manhattan’s indigenous people) and a concept of dubious moral value (“land ownership,” which Europeans used to justify dispossessing indigenous peoples), both of which the memorial rock represents. That these concepts damage the tendril may lead the reader to wonder—which form of life is actually ethically preferable, the city or whatever the tendrils are?
Themes
Bel throws some of his own money at the tendrils, but it doesn’t have the same effect. Manny takes them from Bel, which increases Manny’s power, because Manhattan was “built” on “stolen value.” Manny keeps throwing money at the tendrils. The greater the money’s value, the more it hurts the tendrils. Unfortunately, Manny realizes that he is symbolically buying land around the rock and that Manhattan land costs too much for him to clear much room.
This passage reveals that stealing increases Manny’s power, a revelation that tightens the connection between Manny’s powers and the “stolen value” European colonizers took from Manhattan’s indigenous people. This connection increases the reader’s doubt that Manny’s power or the concept he embodies are straightforwardly good, in ethical terms.
Themes
The woman informs Manny and Bel that the police are on their way. She tells them that she didn’t relocate to New York for people to engage in drugs or public sex acts and asserts: “We’re going to get you, one by one.” Given how this “nosy, racist white woman” has reacted to the tendril’s infection, Manny is terrified of what an infection will do to New York police officers.
Here, the woman implies that she recently moved to New York City. Her desire to “get” other New Yorkers of whom she disapproves suggests that this woman is a gentrifier, a newcomer who seeks to remake the city’s community according to her own (racist, white, business-class) tastes. That the police have responded to her absurd call suggests that, in the novel, police are not defenders of the real New York but enforcers of gentrification. Manny’s terror at the idea of the NYPD becoming infected with tendrils in turn suggests that the tendrils amplify bad tendencies people already have—and that the NYPD’s bad tendencies are particularly frightening for two young, non-white men.
Themes
Manny hears music, turns, and sees an elegantly dressed Black woman (Brooklyn) approaching, holding up a phone. Her music drives the tendrils away. Manny realizes she must be another borough. Soon the tendrils have vanished. The elegant Black woman puts her phone in her purse and asks Manny whether he’s figured out “how this shit works yet.” Manny admits he hasn’t and asks whether she has. She says she’s started hearing things and seeing tendrils—“pigeon-feather things”—everywhere.
Whereas Manny has been fighting the tendrils using money and “stolen value,” Brooklyn defeats them with music. Music’s power, in this scene, indicates both that art is important to New York City and that not all New York City’s power derives from ethically dubious concepts like “stolen value”—some of its power derives from positive concepts like creativity. Brooklyn’s comparison of the tendrils to pigeon feathers, here, suggests that different characters perceive the tendrils differently: whereas Manny sees them as plantlike, Brooklyn sees them as birdlike. Both comparisons suggest the tendrils are organic yet decidedly inhuman.
Themes
The white woman accuses Manny and the others of talking in code about drugs. Manny, hearing sirens, approaches the woman, snatches her phone, and covers her mouth. While deleting her recording, Manny points out that if she really believed he and Bel were drug dealers, she wouldn’t have confronted them—instead, he suggests she called the police on them because they were “comfortable and unafraid” in public. On her phone, he finds—and reads aloud—her name and workplace. He admits to her that he thinks he’s hurt other people before, and he feels sad that he’s “just confirmed her stereotypes,” even though she holds them unjustly. As a threatening end to the conversation, he says he hopes they won’t meet again.
This scene suggests that white people, perhaps especially gentrifiers, call the police on non-white people to enforce racial hierarchies within communities—to keep non-white people from feeling “comfortable and unafraid” in what should be communal spaces. Manny’s suspicion that he used to hurt people, meanwhile, confirms Bel’s intuition that he was, at one point, an “arse-kicker.” Finally, his sadness at reinforcing the racist white woman’s stereotypes about non-white men shows how people from marginalized groups have to think about how their individual behavior reflects on others’ perceptions of the group.
Themes
Manny walks away. After a hesitation, Bel and the elegant Black woman (Brooklyn) follow. The woman guesses Manny is Manhattan. When he asks how she knew, she tells him that “smart, charming, well dressed” men who are “cold enough to strangle you” are completely representative of Wall Street and City Hall. She expresses surprise that he only threatened the white woman and didn’t hurt her. Manny is upset at his intuition he’s hurt other people before.
Bel and Brooklyn’s hesitation before following Manny suggests that his threatening behavior toward the racist white woman alarmed them. Brooklyn’s characterization of Manhattan as “charming” yet “cold enough to strangle” someone hints that Manny’s violent history is actually a conceptual match for Manhattan—but perhaps not for the city as a whole, since Brooklyn, who represents another part of the city, seems to judge him negatively for it. Interestingly, though up to this point Manny has identified strongly with Manhattan, he is upset at the possibility that his past unethical behavior makes him a better fit for his borough.
Themes
Bel asks Manny whether Manny remembers who he is, since he’s regained his “edge.” Manny says no and changes the subject, asking the elegant Black woman (Brooklyn) whether she’s Queens. She gives him a disapproving look. When he guesses she’s Brooklyn, she agrees and says “Brooklyn Thomason” is her real name, too. She’s a lawyer who now works in politics. Noticing she remembers her past, Manny realizes his amnesia is unusual. He asks Brooklyn how she found him and knew to play music to fight the tendrils. She asks whether he’s a local. He says no. Manny suspects she doesn’t like him and wonders whether it’s his personality or that he “jack[ed] up a woman.” Brooklyn tells him she’s been acting on intuition all day—but she’s always heard the city in a special way.
That Manny misidentifies Brooklyn as Queens and that Brooklyn immediately guesses he’s not a New Yorker suggests that being new to the city is important to the concept of Manhattan, whereas being a Brooklyn native is important to the concept of Brooklyn. The revelation that Brooklyn doesn’t have amnesia, meanwhile, suggests there’s something particular about Manny that makes the city want to suppress his previous identity—amnesia does not strike all avatars. Brooklyn’s intuitive knowledge that music could defeat the tendrils, meanwhile, implies a special relationship between art—music in particular—and Brooklyn that doesn’t exist between art and Manhattan.
Themes
Suddenly Manny recognizes Brooklyn as MC Free. Brooklyn insists she hasn’t been MC Free for 30 years—now she’s a city council member and a mother to a 14-year-old. Bel tells her that she was the “greatest of the early female MCs” and that he and Lewisham “grew up on” her music. Brooklyn points out he’s making her feel old, and he quiets.
Art is so important to Brooklyn (the borough) that it chose a former rapper whose music was famous enough to reach Lewisham (south London) as well as wherever Manny grew up. Yet Brooklyn (the person) insists she’s no longer an artist—which suggests she and the city have different ideas about who she ought to be.
Themes
In the silence, Manny thinks about how many crimes have taken place on Manhattan: genocide against indigenous people, slavery, war profiteering, and more. These horrible things are part of his identity.
In this passage, Manny is trying to come to terms with the realization that “great” cities often have ethically horrifying histories, and that embodying such a city may mean embracing some of that horror.
Themes
Once they’ve exited the park, Manny asks Brooklyn what they should do. Brooklyn suggests that these strange phenomena are occurring now for some reason and that the Williamsburg Bridge’s destruction is related. Bel asks Brooklyn whether she really thinks the tendrils and the Woman in White destroyed the Bridge. When Brooklyn asked what woman Bel is talking about, Bel explains about the transformation of the racist white woman. Manny explains his theory that the Woman in White controls the tendrils.
This passage suggests that the Enemy—the tentacle monster that destroyed the Williamsburg Bridge—and the Woman in White are in fact the same entity. Moreover, the Woman likely controls the tendrils that amplify preexisting bigotry. Thus, the novel is teaching the reader that the Woman can perhaps take a human form but is decidedly inhuman and that she is weaponizing human prejudice against New York City.
Themes
When Brooklyn explains that she sensed Manny was in trouble, Manny tells her there are five of them. Brooklyn, realizing that he’s suggesting they help the other three boroughs, refuses: she has enough responsibility raising her daughter (Jojo) and taking care of her father (Clyde). Suddenly, they catch sight of a dog, across the street, infected with tendrils. Brooklyn compares the tendrils to a disease. Bel points out that the infection will soon spread all over the city. Brooklyn muses that she was able to exercise her power to remove the infection from the park.
This passage demonstrates how community belonging and individual identity can conflict: although Brooklyn represents a whole borough, she believes that her individual responsibilities to her family should come first. The quick movement of the tendrils, meanwhile, reinforces earlier suggestions the novel has made that their “infection”—which may represent both gentrification and bigotry—can spread quickly through a dense urban environment.
Themes
Manny asks Brooklyn, even if she doesn’t want to get involved fighting the tendrils, to help him learn how to embody New York. Suddenly, he has a vision of her as Brooklyn the borough—neighborhoods, buildings, and residents. She agrees to help, though she claims there isn’t a single correct way to be a New Yorker. She tells them she’s going to call her family first, and then they can talk.
Brooklyn claims there isn’t a single correct way to be a New Yorker—yet earlier in the novel, Paolo told New York City’s avatar, a single person, that he would have to represent the entire city. Brooklyn’s claim hints that the avatar may have experienced problems because he was given an impossible task: to be all of New York City by himself.
Themes
Manny and Brooklyn feel another borough manifest and recite in unison: “Oh, come on. The shape of the Earth is non-Euclidean. All that means is you use different math!” Bel says they’re freaking him out. Brooklyn says they were reacting to Queens. Manny suggests Bel go home, given the strangeness. Bel agrees and wishes him luck. After Bel leaves, Brooklyn tells Manny they should take public transport to Queens, since they don’t know where in Queens the person they’re looking for is.
Non-Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system based on different axioms than the ones that people normally use (the axioms of Euclidean geometry). That the embodiment of Queens is yelling about geometry suggests that mathematics will be important to the concept of Queens.
Themes
