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Chapter 5
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
At the Bronx Art Center, Bronca surveys pieces by an (almost entirely white) artists’ collective led by a man she dubs Strawberry Manbun. Jess, Yijing, and the Center’s assistant Veneza are there. After looking at the art, Bronca asks, “Are you fucking with us?” The art represents lynchings, a Jewish man raping a sexualized woman with dark skin, Native American men in stereotyped clothes raping the same woman, and more. Bronca asks Manbun whether 4chan inspired them.
4chan is an Internet forum known for far-right, racist, and neo-Nazi political content. When Bronca asks the art collective whether they are “fucking with” her and her colleagues, she is pointing out that the art trades in extreme racist and sexist stereotypes; given that Bronca and her colleagues are all female and mostly non-white, the art seems intended to offend or frighten them.
Themes
One of the collective tells Bronca his work is ironic. Bronca asks what, exactly, the gang rape is trying to say. A young-looking member of the collective, smirking, claims the work is about female genital mutilation, since the victim is “African Black.” Bronca tells the collective that the Bronx Art Center not only exists to “celebrate the diversity of the Bronx” but also to exhibit good art. Jess adds, forcefully, that they don’t exhibit prejudiced art.
The collective’s invocation of irony and claims about political commentary on female genital mutilation illustrate how some artists use bigoted material in their work to shock or titillate viewers while claiming to be commenting on (rather than reproducing) bigotry to avoid taking responsibility for their work’s ethical content. Bronca’s rejoinder that the Center “celebrate[s] the diversity of the Bronx” and exhibits good art suggests that she thinks the collective’s art fails both ethically (rather than celebrating diversity, it attacks women and minorities) and technically (it’s not well made).
Themes
Manbun tells Bronca she hasn’t seen the collective’s best piece, “Dangerous Mental Machines.” When artists remove the tarp covering it, Bronca realizes it’s technically adroit, unlike the work she’s already seen. It represents a Chinatown street, full of entities “for whom the word people is a laughable misnomer.” Somehow, Bronca can hear their noises—which aren’t human speech. She smells seawater. Suddenly, the entities in the painting charge. Veneza grabs Bronca’s arm, and the painting is just a painting again. Due to the knowledge she gained when she became the Bronx, Bronca realizes the painting constituted an attack on her and the city.
This passage indicates that racist art is dangerous. The last painting that the collective shows Bronca represents residents of Chinatown—presumably, Chinese American New Yorkers—as so inhuman it would be “laughable” to consider them people. In this science-fiction novel, where concepts like stereotypes have power over the material world, the anti-Asian stereotypes in the painting constitute a literal attack on Bronca as an artist of color. The smell of seawater links the attack to the Enemy/the Woman in White, who has previously been associated with deep-sea creatures; the association suggests that the painting is another instance of the Woman using human bigotry to divide and conquer humanity.
Themes
Demanding the artists cover the painting, Bronca tells them she understands the reference—“dangerous mental machines” is a term H.P. Lovecraft coined to describe Asian New Yorkers in Chinatown, whom he believed were clever but soulless. Yijing chimes in that, in the same letter, Lovecraft also expressed virulent prejudice against Black, Jewish, and Portuguese people. When Veneza says, “Shit, even the Portuguese?”, Bronca recalls Veneza is biracial, Black and Portuguese, and has fallen out with her Portuguese family.
H.P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937) was an influential and extremely, overtly racist writer of science fiction and horror. By associating its villains with Lovecraft, the novel suggests that it is seeking to combat Lovecraft’s influence in the science-fiction/horror tradition—because his art’s unethical, racist content is genuinely damaging and therefore matters. Veneza’s surprise that Lovecraft was bigoted against Portuguese people, too, underlines the randomness and absurdity of Lovecraft’s racial, ethnic, and national hatreds.
Themes
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Bronca tells the artists that this painting, rather than offering an ironic take on Lovecraft’s racism, embodies his racist perspective. The Center won’t exhibit it. Though one of the artists looks “stunned that Bronca’s still talking,” Manbun claims to accept Bronca’s decision. The collective start packing up their art.
When one of the collective is “stunned that Bronca’s still talking,” it suggests the artists knew their last painting was dangerous and expected it to hurt her.
Themes
Since the artists didn’t react to the painting, Bronca decides they must be “ordinary”—which means they couldn’t have created the painting themselves. Examining them, she sees a white tendril sticking out of Manbun’s ankle. Though Bronca doesn’t know what it is, she guesses. As Manbun is leaving, she asks him who he’s working for. He replies that Bronca will see his boss soon, “without a bathroom door to protect” her. Bronca slams the door on him.
This passage reveals that the dangerous painting has no effect on “ordinary” people—only Bronca, who is an embodied borough, and, inexplicably, Veneza, who noticed the painting moving. The tendril in Manbun’s leg and his allusion to Bronca’s earlier confrontation with the Woman in White in the bathroom reveal that the artists’ collective is working for the Woman. On a thematic level, Manbun’s tendril-infection also suggests that seeking to place bad, racist art in a community’s public art center is another way of invading and gentrifying the community.
Themes
Yijing, furious that racist white men would try to force bigoted art into a gallery “run by women of color,” suggests the Center hire lawyers. Jess says they need to tell the artists using the upstairs workshops to vacate the Center for the night—the collective had a “brownshirt vibe,” and two of her grandparents died in a concentration camp. Bronca says she’ll warn the “keyholders”—artists who live in the Center—but won’t force the ones who are homeless, many of whom have abuse histories, to leave. Jess agrees but says Bronca must warn the Center’s board about what’s happened.
“Brownshirt” was a slang term for a Nazi paramilitary group (officially called the Storm Detachment) that aided Adolf Hitler’s takeover of Germany. When Jess says the artists’ collective has a “brownshirt vibe,” she’s communicating that Nazi history and her grandparents’ deaths during the Holocaust have given her important concepts for predicting when a group of bigoted men might get physically violent. Bronca’s response—that she won’t evict from the Center artists who have only abusive homes to go back to—shows that she takes Jess’s worries about the artist’s collective seriously, but that she also wants to protect the Center’s artists from other abusers.
Themes
Veneza goes to the reception computer and calls over her coworkers, showing them a YouTube video starring Manbun. Veneza explains that she image-searched the logo in his email and found it belonged to a group called Alt Artistes. She plays a video of Manbun ranting about “disrespect for a superior culture,” Picasso, and Gauguin. Veneza tells her coworkers they need to protect their identities against doxing and other internet-based harassment. The women work on protecting themselves online until late; then Jess and Yijing head home.
The name “Alt Artistes” associates the artists’ collective to the real-world “alt-right,” a right-wing white supremacist movement. Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) and Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903) are famous white European avant-garde artists. Mentioning Picasso and Gauguin while complaining about “disrespect for a superior culture,” Manbun seems to be using Picasso and Gauguin’s art as an ideological weapon against anyone who believes that white European culture isn’t “superior” to other world cultures. This use of art as an ideological weapon shows that art has political as well as aesthetic relevance. Veneza’s recognition that her coworkers need to protect themselves against online harassment from the Alt Artistes both reminds the reader that the internet is a powerful tool of racist harassment and characterizes Veneza as younger and tech-savvier than her colleagues.
Themes
Veneza tells Bronca there’s something creepy about one of the Center’s bathroom stalls and “everything’s weird all of a sudden.” Bronca realizes Veneza can sense the city has come alive; she’s surprised, since Veneza’s from New Jersey. Bronca decides that since Veneza can sense the weirdness, Bronca should tell her the truth. She explains the painting was a “doorway.” Veneza, horrified that they were really traveling to the place the painting represented, replies: “I got your back anywhere, B, but dayum.” Bronca tells Veneza she can’t protect Bronca in this case, because she doesn’t have the “boots.” Then she offers to show Veneza something and then drive her home to Jersey City.
Earlier, the novel hinted that Veneza had some special sense of the Woman in White’s activities when she saved Bronca from the Alt Artistes’ last painting. Yet Bronca’s surprise that Veneza has noticed “everything’s weird” suggests Bronca doesn’t think of Veneza, a New Jerseyan, as a true member of New York City’s community, even though Veneza works in the Bronx. Her claim that Veneza doesn’t have the “boots” to watch her back, meanwhile, is a reference to Bronca’s steel-toed boots, which she uses to kick abusers. For Bronca, having “boots” means having the power to defend yourself.
Themes
Driving, Bronca explains to Veneza what she knows. Though hesitant, Bronca hears the city encouraging her to be honest: “We like having allies, don’t we? Real ones, anyway.” Before exiting the Bronx, Bronca pulls off the expressway, drives to Bridge Park, and walks Veneza down to the Harlem River. Bronca begins to dance. As she dances, she lifts a finger—and a pipe lifts from the river to mimic the gesture. Veneza is astonished. Bronca insists that what Veneza senses is real and “dangerous.”
Bronca has decided to defend herself alone rather than find the other embodied boroughs. Yet the city, by encouraging her to find “allies,” reminds her of the powers and joys of community. That Bronca uses dance to demonstrate how symbols and concepts give her power over the city, meanwhile, shows the importance of various art forms to her character and to New York City.
Themes
Veneza asks whether Bronca can make “any part of the city” move. Bronca raises her arm and flexes, and the river mimics her like an “immense, spectral Rosie the Riveter parody.” Veneza’s joy at this magic makes Bronca feels good about embodying a borough for the first time. Veneza notices that while the Harlem River is in the air, mimicking Bronca’s arm, it’s also still flowing along the riverbed. Seeing her confusion, Bronca explains that “reality isn’t binary.” Every possible reality that could have happened really has happened.
The novel has mentioned Rosie the Riveter once before—when Aislyn decided to nickname the Woman in White Rosie. Whereas Aislyn failed to remember Rosie’s real slogan (“WE CAN DO IT”), Bronca correctly mimics Rosie’s iconic bicep-flex. Since Rosie the Riveter is a symbol of community action, Aislyn’s failure and Bronca’s success in alluding to Rosie may foreshadow their eventual relationships to New York City’s community as a whole (that is, Bronca will perhaps work with the other embodied boroughs, while Aislyn will continue to reject them). Meanwhile, Bronca’s claim that “reality isn’t binary” makes explicit that, in the novel, multiple realities or parallel dimensions exist.
Themes
When Veneza asks whether Bronca is talking about the “many-worlds interpretation” in “quantum physics,” Bronca tells her a story. Once upon a time, only one reality existed that was “full of life.” Every time a living creature made a choice, however, reality split into multiple realities, one for each of the possible choices the living creature could have made. To illustrate this multiplicity of realities, Bronca stacks her hands, one atop the other.
“Quantum physics” scientifically describes the nature and behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. The “many-worlds interpretation” of quantum physics is a theory that explains some strange properties of subatomic particles by arguing that infinite possible universes exist. In other words, Bronca is telling Veneza that they live in a single reality—but an infinite number of other realities (a “multiverse”) exist alongside theirs.
Themes
Bronca explains that it’s not only choices that create new realities: so do myths, lies, stories, and other concepts. When a city gains a certain mass of realities from all the choices, ideas, and so forth occurring in it, it travels across multiple realities and becomes “alive.” Veneza, awestruck, says that when she saw the city from her roof, she thought she saw it breathing. Bronca says that it really was, but that now New York has been truly born.
Here the novel is using the scientific theory of many worlds to make literal the figurative claim that individual people’s and communities’ beliefs, concepts, stories, and so forth create the reality in which they live. The novel also seems to be suggesting that cities are special instances of this phenomenon because they bring so many people—and thus so many individual “realities”—together.
Themes
Veneza asks about the painting. Bronca says that one of the other realities, for reasons unknown to her, hates our reality and tries to kill cities when they’re born. It tried to kill New York, destroying the Williamsburg Bridge in the process, but someone like Bronca thwarted it. When Veneza asks whether there are other people who can control the river, Bronca explains that there are six: five embodied boroughs and New York City’s avatar, who repelled the attack that morning. She also notes that the creature from the other reality has switched up its tactics. Internally, she worries about the other avatars, but then she reminds herself that she only wants to protect Veneza and stay out of things.
This passage reveals that the Enemy/the Woman in White is an alien entity not from another planet but from a parallel reality. Bronca’s claim that she doesn’t know why the Woman in White hates humanity or cities foreshadows the revelation of the Woman’s true reasons later in the novel. Bronca’s worry about the city’s other avatars reveals that she does care about the wider New York City community, even though she is trying not to care about them and to stay out of the fight.
Themes
Veneza remembers the creatures in the painting moving. Bronca says that life in other realities doesn’t necessarily look humanoid. Veneza is disturbed the painting-creatures could really exist. Bronca muses: “That was what had made the paint-figures so creepy, really. To know that the things she was seeing weren’t just mindless, swirl-faced monsters, but things with minds and feelings? Minds as incomprehensibly alien as Lovecraft once imagined his fellow human beings to be.”
This passage compares Veneza and Bronca’s reactions to the “paint-figures” with H.P. Lovecraft’s bigoted reactions to other people unlike himself. The comparison is ambiguous. It could suggest that there’s something prejudiced and unethical about Veneza and Bronca seeing these “things with minds as feelings” as “creepy”—or it could suggest that Lovecraft’s fear of “incomprehensibly alien” entities is justifiable in theory but not when applied in practice to other human beings, who are in fact neither incomprehensible nor alien.
Themes
Bronca and Veneza get in the car and keep driving to Jersey City. Bronca warns Veneza that while she, Bronca, has the power to fight extradimensional intruders, Veneza doesn’t. Veneza says if she sees any, she’ll fetch Bronca. Bronca says if she isn’t around, Veneza needs to run away—not intervene, like she did in the gallery. Veneza points out that if she hadn’t intervened, the painting creatures would have killed Bronca. Bronca begs Veneza to take care of herself. Veneza grudgingly agrees.
Veneza saved Bronca when the paint-figures attacked, which shows that Bronca needs allies and a community to survive. Yet at this point in the novel, Bronca’s independence and her protectiveness of Veneza make her unwilling to accept even her good friend as an ally.
Themes
Veneza asks why she could see the paint creatures when Yijing, Jess, and the Alt Artistes seemed unable to. Bronca tells her some people are “closer to the city” and can either become its avatars or merely “serve its will.” When Veneza asks whether she could have become an avatar like Bronca, Bronca says yes—except she’s from New Jersey.
Bronca doesn’t explain why some people are “closer to the city” than others, but given that the city derives its power from beliefs, concepts, stereotypes, etc., it seems likely that those New Yorkers are “closer” to the city who best adhere to New York City stereotypes. That the city bends residents to “serve its will” once again casts doubt on the city’s ethical status. Veneza and Bronca’s exchange about whether, as a New Jerseyan, Veneza could have become an avatar foreshadows the importance of Veneza’s relationship to New York City for the rest of the novel.
Themes
Veneza points out that if people are already trying to kill Bronca with paint creatures, things could get much worse for her if someone puts her address on the internet. She offers to let Bronca stay with her. Bronca explains that she derives her power from New York City—she won’t be able to fight the extradimensional intruders if she’s crashing in Jersey. When they reach Veneza’s place, Veneza exits the car. Bronca tells Veneza she’ll be fine. Veneza says she knows Bronca fought a police officer at Stonewall, but that’s not the same as extradimensional monsters. They say good night. Driving home, Bronca prays for Veneza’s safety.
Again, “Stonewall” refers to the 1969 Stonewall protests, pro-LGBT demonstrations sparked by a police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. When Veneza compares Bronca’s participation in the Stonewall protests to Bronca’s conflict with the Woman in White, the novel compares the Woman’s invasion to bigoted police action and gentrification while suggesting the Woman will be more dangerous to Bronca personally than she might be to the other embodied boroughs.
Themes
