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Chapter 6
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
In Queens, while doing homework for her master’s degree in engineering, Padmini Prakash is daydreaming about a comical argument she read on Tumblr—an argument that non-Euclidean geometry frightened H.P. Lovecraft. Due to the competitive “H-1B lottery” and the “ICE gestapo,” Padmini studies finance—which promises a job after graduation—rather than math, which she likes better. Glancing out her window at Manhattan, she sees an enormous tentacle destroy the Williamsburg Bridge. She assumes it’s a special effect—she’s seen movie crews exploiting “multicultural working-class” Queens “as a backdrop for their all-white upper-class dramadies”—but then hears the breaking bridge and people screaming.
Tumblr is a social media and blogging platform known for its fan communities. In Lovecraft’s 1928 short story “The Call of Cthulhu,” sailors come upon a lost city called R’lyeh constructed according to non-Euclidean geometry, which scares and disorients them. The reference to non-Euclidean geometry here suggests that when Manny and Brooklyn echoed Padmini’s exclamation about non-Euclidean geometry earlier, Padmini was talking to herself about how ridiculous it was that Lovecraft believed an entire legitimate mathematical system was creepy. This exclamation characterizes Padmini as both a math nerd and a science-fiction nerd. The “H-1B lottery” is a process by which non-citizens can get visas to work legally in the U.S., while “ICE gestapo” refers to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and compares them to the historical Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police. These references indicate that Padmini works in the U.S. but is not a citizen. Padmini’s mention that movies have started to use “multicultural” Queens “as a backdrop” for moves with white casts, meanwhile, indicates that the gentrification of Queens has already begun.
Themes
Padmini hears the subway, feels at one with the train, and then senses something wrong in her neighbor Mrs. Yu’s backyard. Mrs. Yu’s grandsons are playing in her small backyard pool when its bottom changes into something “organic.” The boys aren’t touching the bottom, but they will. Padmini runs for her door. Gifted with comprehending “the mechanics of the whole business,” she knows water helps the Enemy travel between realities. If the boys touch the bottom, the Enemy will kidnap them to another reality.
Bronca, when she became an avatar, gained an understanding of the history of living cities and their war with the Enemy. Similarly, Padmini gains an understanding of “the mechanics of the whole business.” Since Bronca is the oldest avatar and Padmini is a mathematician, it seems the city is giving its avatars gifts that match their preexisting individual characteristics.
Themes
Padmini runs down her apartment stairs, startling Aishwarya Aunty, and pictures equations rendering the fastest trip to the pool. She’s suddenly transported to Mrs. Yu’s backyard. She hauls one boy from the pool. As Mrs. Yu enters the backyard, the other boy touches the bottom. Tendrils envelop him. Padmini and Mrs. Yu grab the boy’s hand and try to pull him out, but the tendrils are too strong.
Padmini lives with her relative Aishwarya, but it’s not clear from the respectful address “Aunty” whether Aishwarya is Padmini’s literal aunt or just an older female relative. Padmini’s use of math to help the boys faster shows that math concepts—as well as historical and artistic concepts—can channel the city’s power.
Themes
Padmini, thinking of equations in fluid mechanics, imagines a lubricant between the boy and the tendrils. This trick allows Padmini and Mrs. Yu to pull the boy free. Padmini is overjoyed to have succeeded but also to have done something she’s “chosen” rather than something she’s “expected to do.” An energy wave passes out of her body through the neighborhood. When she checks the pool bottom, it’s normal.
That Padmini feels so happy to do something of her own free choice, rather than because she’s expected to, implies that she doesn’t like her current life working in New York finance; rather, she feels pressure to do it. Her happiness to exercise free choice is somewhat ironic under the circumstances, since Queens has chosen her without asking her input to be its avatar and defender. The energy wave that Padmini emits suggests that there’s something about Padmini and the other avatars that’s so quintessentially New York that it's deadly to the outside interference the tendrils represent.
Themes
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Manny and Brooklyn arrive at Mrs. Yu’s backyard. Manny sees damage to our reality surrounding the pool and smells ocean. He speculates the pool bottom-monster may be the same composite entity as the tendrils, remembering the Woman in White calls herself both “we” and “I”: the “distinction between the individual self and the collective plural” may not exist in her culture. Brooklyn points out the Woman can control the tendrils and may have a subterranean presence across the city, “like a fungus.” Overhearing, Padmini expresses disgust at the comparison.
This passage emphasizes the Woman in White’s alienness. Whereas the novel’s human characters recognize both individual people and communities—both “I” and “we”—the Woman in White and entities like her may not understand the “distinction” between them, which suggests they conceive of selfhood in a radically different way than the human characters. In the same vein, by comparing the Woman and her tendrils to a “fungus,” Brooklyn is arguing that the Woman may resemble earth’s nonhuman lifeforms more than its human ones. Yet the avatars, as representatives of entire boroughs, also inhabit a weird middle ground “between the individual self and the collective plural”—which hints that they may have more in common with the Woman than they yet realize.
Themes
Brooklyn asks why the tendrils attacked Padmini’s neighbors instead of Padmini. Manny explains that attacking vulnerable people close to your real target can trick your target “out of a safe position.” Brooklyn gives Manny a suspicious look and asks why Padmini was safe in her apartment. Aishwarya, standing protectively near Padmini, seconds the question. Manny directs the others to examine Padmini’s building: it’s somehow “more Queens […] than the rest of Queens”—and thus protected.
Manny easily follows the cold-blooded logic behind the tendrils’ attack tactics. From Brooklyn’s suspicious look at Manny, the reader may infer that Brooklyn is wondering whether Manny has used such cold-blooded tactics in his forgotten past. This inference may in turn lead the reader to ask whether Manny and the city that chose him are in any way morally superior to the antagonists they are combating. The avatars’ realization that Padmini’s apartment building is invulnerable to the tendrils because it’s so “Queens,” meanwhile, hints that the tendrils represent gentrification and homogenization. Because the building is not homogenous but representative of a particular place (Queens), the tendrils can’t touch it.
Themes
Brooklyn suggests they rest for the night. Manny asks whether they should look for the Bronx and the fifth borough, whose name he’s forgotten. Brooklyn reminds him the fifth borough is Staten Island and that they have no idea how to find “her.” When Padmini asks how they know Staten Island is female, Brooklyn says it “feels right.” Then she argues that since neither the Bronx nor Staten Island has been destroyed, they’ve probably already fought off the Woman in White and can wait a little longer.
Brooklyn, Manny, and Padmini are tired and need to rest in safety. Yet, given that the boroughs’ avatars need one another for protection from the Woman in White, Brooklyn’s cavalier argument that the Bronx and Staten Island can wait gives credence to Bronca’s and Aislyn’s resentful suspicions that the other boroughs don’t consider them important parts of the New York community. That Brooklyn correctly guesses Staten Island is female again illustrates how the boroughs’ avatars can use their preexisting beliefs and concepts about each borough to figure out what the other avatars are probably like.
Themes
Manny blurts out that there’s a sixth avatar who’s already defeated the Woman in White. Brooklyn points out that New York City only has five boroughs. Padmini replies, “Five shapes that fit together make one whole.” Brooklyn realizes they must be talking about New York City’s avatar and suggests this man must be insane. Manny adds, “But strong,” and realizes he likes Brooklyn’s assumption that the avatar is male. He says they should find the avatar.
Padmini’s statement, “Five shapes that fit together make one whole,” offers a positive vision of community: each individual piece can remain exactly how it is—retain its original shape, its identity—and still create something new by entering into a relationship with the others. Given the ways that becoming an avatar has changed Manny and Brooklyn, however, it’s not clear that Padmini’s view of the relationship between individuals and their community is correct. Manny’s preexisting concepts of what New York City’s avatar will be like, as well as his interest in the avatar’s gender, foreshadow the importance of their relationship to the rest of the story.
Themes
Padmini agrees with Brooklyn that they should rest and suggests separating for the night. Aishwarya cuts in that it’s stupid for them to split up when under attack. Then Padmini asks whether this weirdness is happening in other cities as well. Manny remembers the Woman in White mentioning São Paolo was in New York. He speculates that the process New York is undergoing has already happened in São Paolo and that, once the process is complete, the city will be safe, but the embodied boroughs will be embodied boroughs forever. Padmini, horrified, points out she’s not a U.S. citizen: if she can’t get a visa, she could end up “puttering around Chennai, being Queens.”
Aishwarya, by advising Padmini, Brooklyn, and Manny not to split up, reminds the reader how important community is to survival. Yet Padmini reacts with horror when she realizes that she could be Queens forever, even if she goes back to Chennai (the capital of Tamil Nadu, a predominantly Tamil-speaking state in southern India)—which also reminds the reader that the city didn’t ask any of these people’s permission before choosing them as its avatars and defenders. The city’s dubiously ethical foisting of responsibility onto its human avatars again suggests that what is good for the community’s survival won’t always be good or pleasant for individual community members.
Themes
Mrs. Yu opens the door and asks Manny, partly in English and partly in Chinese, whether he’s biracial. Confused, he says no. Then she tells them: “In China, many cities have gods of the wall […] It’s normal. Relax.” Mrs. Yu continues that, contrary to what “most of you Christians” believe, gods are “people” with “jobs.” Brooklyn, realizing they’ve been in Mrs. Yu’s yard awhile, offers to leave. Mrs. Yu accepts.
In contrast with the avatars’ own disturbed confusion at their transformations, Mrs. Yu’s casual acceptance of the avatars suggests that the avatars’ reactions are culturally specific, based on concepts and beliefs they have derived from their nationalities, religions, etc., and not representative of how all people would react.
Themes
Aishwarya invites Brooklyn and Manny to stay, since her and Padmini’s apartment is protected. Manny suggests his apartment might work too, though his roommate might not like it. Decisively, Brooklyn tells them that her place should work and is large enough.
That Brooklyn, Manny, and Padmini all turn out to live in buildings quintessential to their boroughs and thus protected from the Woman in White suggests that buildings are as important as people to the essence or concept of a city.
Themes
While Brooklyn makes a call, Padmini tells Manny she thought he was Punjabi. He insists he’s “plain old ordinary Black,” expresses disinterest in “other stuff” in his ancestry, and summarizes, “America.” Padmini recalls Harlem, Central Park’s history as a former “Black and Irish neighborhood,” and enslaved African people buried under Wall Street, where she works. She suggests that though white people control much of Manhattan, it was built by Black, indigenous, and immigrant populations and concludes: “That must be why you look so . . . everything.”
Earlier, Douglas Acevedo assumed Manny was Puerto Rican like him. Mrs. Yu has just asked Manny, partly in Chinese, whether he’s biracial. Now Padmini, an immigrant from India, admits she guessed Manny was Punjabi, an ethnic group from the Indian subcontinent. This pattern suggests that people tend to assume Manny belongs, at least in part, to their own ethnic group or culture. Yet despite his amnesia, Manny is very sure he’s Black—which reveals that becoming Manhattan hasn’t erased his entire personal identity. Padmini’s suggestion that Manhattan chose a racially ambiguous Black man to represent it, even though white people control the borough, hints that boroughs and cities derive their essences not from their most powerful residents but from the residents that helped build them. This fact may explain why, in the novel, gentrification is so bad: it privileges rich and powerful white people over the working-class people and people of color who are more likely to have literally and figuratively built a given city. Thus, gentrification degrades or destroys the city’s essence.
Themes
Manny asks Padmini about working on Wall Street. She has she has no choice—because she’s not a citizen, she needs a job with a corporation rich enough to pay visa fees. When Manny replies, “I don’t judge,” Padmini tells him that the company she works for is evil, she hates New York, and she only stays because her family needs her to be successful. Manny concludes this is why Padmini became Queens.
Padmini works a job she finds ethically disgusting to help her family. This backstory again shows how the needs of a community (Padmini’s family) can conflict with the needs of an individual community member (Padmini). It also suggests that ethically compromising self-sacrifice is essential to the concept of Queens.
Themes
Brooklyn tells the others she’s let her father Clyde know they’re coming and asks whether they’re ready to leave. Padmini wants to pack a bag, so the others accompany her up to her apartment. As they climb through the building, diverse neighbors open their doors to say hello. Manny realizes the building is a “microcosm of Queens.” He loves the experience and thinks he wants to fight for the city that produced it.
A ”microcosm” is a small representation of a larger phenomenon. When Manny thinks that the apartment is a “microcosm of Queens,” he means it represents Queens in miniature—much as each avatar represents his or her borough. That diversity is essential to the apartment and to Queens explains why the homogenizing power of gentrification is so threatening to the borough. Meanwhile, Manny’s love of the apartment shows his growing affection for New York City despite his worry about the city’s (and his own) moral code.
Themes
All at once, Manny sees himself, Brooklyn, and Padmini as cityscapes. He’s contemplating how powerful they could be if they joined together when suddenly, he’s back in his human body. He falls, smacking his face on the stairs. As Aishwarya helps him up, he hears a voice in his head pointing out that he’s only Manhattan—it’s the job of New York City’s avatar to unite the city. Then Manny has a vision of a subway station with “white tile walls” where a young man in dirty clothes is sleeping on newspapers. Manny experiences the sudden, intense thought that he belongs to this man—that he would die or kill for him and will act like a “monster” for him.
Manny’s vision of himself, Brooklyn, and Padmini as cityscapes suggests that he can “see” parallel realities in the multiverse. His vision of New York City’s avatar is the first hint, in the novel, of what happened to the avatar after he disappeared following his fight with the Woman in White. Manny’s extreme emotional reaction to seeing the avatar—especially his willingness to act like a “monster” for him—suggests both that Manhattan has a special relationship to the concept or essence of New York City, and that Manny’s love for the city and its avatar may cause him to act unethically.
Themes
Coming out of his vision, Manny realizes that he, Brooklyn, and Padmini are all sitting on the stairs. Brooklyn looks at Manny, confirms he had the vision too, and states that there really is a sixth avatar, New York City’s. Padmini asks whether the others recognized where the avatar was. Brooklyn says no, but it wasn’t Brooklyn. Manny realizes she knows the avatar isn’t in her borough because Manny experienced the vision most forcefully.
That Manny experienced the vision most forcefully is evidence that New York City’s avatar vanished to somewhere in Manhattan. This fact underscores the special relationship between Manhattan and New York City’s essence.
Themes
Aishwarya asks about the vision. Padmini explains they saw a dark subway station where a boy was sleeping on newspaper. Internally, Manny recalls that New York City’s avatar is in his early 20s, Black, thin, and fast-looking. Brooklyn laments the number of out-of-use subway tunnels their vision could have depicted. Manny speculates that the vision occurred because three boroughs came together; if they find the others, they may be able to find the avatar.
In this passage, Manny realizes that the five boroughs’ avatars need to come together to find New York City’s avatar and protect him from the Woman in White. This realization reveals that community and teamwork among the boroughs are essential to saving the city.
Themes
Brooklyn tells Padmini to get her stuff. After Padmini and Aishwarya enter their apartment, Brooklyn asks Manny whether he’s remembered more. Manny thinks he’s trying not to remember some things because his old self conflicts with being Manhattan. He tells Brooklyn he used to hurt people for his job, he’d decided not to anymore, and he came to New York for a “new start.” Brooklyn tells him what he’s saying suits Manhattan and mentions his “weird feelings” about New York City’s avatar. He sighs, and she apologizes for the accidental “Vulcan mind-meld.”
Although Manny decided he didn’t want to hurt people anymore and came to New York City for a “new start,” he’s recently realized he would be willing to kill and act like a monster for New York City’s avatar. This fact suggests that the city may not give Manny the new start he craves. It also suggests that while Manny’s old self may conflict with being Manhattan, the conflict doesn’t derive from Manny’s old self being violent—in fact, the city may need Manny’s capacity for violence. When Brooklyn says “Vulcan mind-meld,” she’s alluding to the science-fiction franchise Star Trek, which includes aliens called Vulcans who can engage in telepathic contact via a technique called a ”mind-meld.” This allusion reveals Brooklyn could sense Manny’s feelings during their shared vision. That she calls his feelings “weird” indicates that she did not have the same intense emotional reaction to New York City’s avatar that Manny did.
Themes
Brooklyn tells Manny she doesn’t like the idea of all six avatars meeting—she doesn’t want to mind-meld with them all. Manny suggests that maybe New York City’s avatar will ease the connection. Then he asks how Brooklyn’s doing. She tells him she’s fighting for New York and her family’s safety—but if push came to shove, she’d choose her family over the city. Manny says he’ll help Brooklyn’s family if he can. Brooklyn, touched, says she hopes he can become “the person you actually want to be.” She adds: “This city will eat you alive, you know, if you let it. Don’t.”
Brooklyn’s discomfort with “mind-melding” and her insistence that she’d choose her family over the city again demonstrate that the city is asking Brooklyn to give up or change her identity in ways she doesn’t want to. Her warning to Manny that the city might “eat [him] alive” oddly echoes Matthew Houlihan’s earlier warning to Aislyn that the city would “eat” her—and foreshadows a possible conflict between the avatars’ well-being and the city’s. Finally, Brooklyn’s wish that Manny becomes who he “actually want[s] to be” shows that Brooklyn has realized the city may ask Manny to use his old, violent tendencies to defend it.
Themes
Padmini and Aishwarya come out of the apartment. Padmini, Manny, and Brooklyn get a Lyft. Manny, stunned by the city, sticks his head out of the window. The wind almost ruins Brooklyn’s hair. Though he gives her an apologetic smile, he thinks: “He can’t help it, though. He is falling in love with a city, and men in love are not always considerate or wise.”
Though in an earlier conversation Brooklyn decried Uber and Lyft outcompeting New York City taxis, in this scene the avatars still take a Lyft—which suggests how difficult it is even for socially aware people to avoid participating in the homogenization of cities by global corporations. Manny’s realization that he's “falling in love with a city” implies a romantic, sexual component to his reaction to New York City’s avatar, while his thought that “men in love are not always considerate or wise” again implies that Manny’s love for the city may cause him to act in unethical or otherwise questionable ways.
Themes
The Lyft deposits Padmini, Manny, and Brooklyn outside two brownstones in Bedford Stuyvesant. The first is “traditional,” with a stoop; the second opens directly onto a courtyard. Padmini notes Brooklyn must be rich. Brooklyn explains her father Clyde uses a wheelchair and her family lives in the second, accessible brownstone; the embodied boroughs will be staying in the first. Entering the brownstone, they sense its rightness. Brooklyn comments: “Ain’t nothing more Brooklyn than a brownstone.”
Bedford Stuyvesant is a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn known for its historic brownstones, townhouses mostly built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That one of the brownstones is “traditional” suggests that it may be particularly representative of Brooklyn (the borough) and thus resistant to the Woman in White’s tendrils. Brooklyn’s declaration that there “ain’t nothing more Brooklyn than a brownstone” emphasizes the importance of distinctive architecture—arguably an art form—to a city’s essence.
Themes
Brooklyn explains that her father Clyde bought both brownstones cheaply during the 1970s, when white flight and a bad economy made them less expensive. Now the brownstones are hugely valuable. She expresses relief that they were able to renovate the second brownstone for wheelchair accessibility before the block became a historical landmark. Padmini expresses surprise that the city would object to making a building wheelchair accessible. Brooklyn replies, “Welcome to New York.”
Wheelchair accessibility makes a brownstone less traditional and thus less characteristically Brooklyn. At the same time, however, wheelchair accessibility is an ethical response to the fact that some people need extra help getting around. This conflict between what is characteristic of a city and what is ethical—which Brooklyn’s snarky “Welcome to New York” underlines—makes clear that not every form of homogenization is bad: for example, it would be good if all buildings were wheelchair accessible and thus, in one sense, more homogenous.
Themes
They order takeout. While they eat, Manny feels guilty and worried because the Bronx, Staten Island, and New York City’s avatar are alone. He privately vows to New York City’s avatar that he’ll find him. Manny wonders whether it’s so bad that the city has found a use for his “unsavory” traits. He wonders whether it’s wrong to use those traits for the city’s benefit—he likes the idea that it’s okay. When he sleeps, he “dreams eight million beautifully ruthless dreams.”
Manny’s passion for New York City and its avatar is leading him to embrace “unsavory” traits he wanted to leave behind—which again hints that the city may be bad for Manny’s ethical development. When the novel was published, New York City’s population was estimated at more than eight million; Manny’s “eight million beautifully ruthless dreams” may suggest both that he’s dreaming on behalf of the city’s entire population and that there’s something essentially “ruthless” about New York.
Themes
