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Interruption (3)
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
Brooklyn pretends to stay in the first brownstone with Padmini and Manny for their benefit, but she’s really doing it because she lived there as a child. Opening a window and reminiscing in her childhood room, she thinks that turning into an avatar of Brooklyn makes sense for her—she ran for city council to give voice to “people who actually love New York, versus those merely occupying and exploiting it.”
Brooklyn’s thoughts about why she ran for city council give another implicit definition of what it means to be a good member of a city community: you have to “actually love” the place where you live, unlike the transient residents and gentrifiers who “merely occupy[] and exploit[] it.”
Themes
Brooklyn gets a call from her daughter Jojo. When Brooklyn asks Jojo whether she’s finished her homework, Jojo says she misses her old English teacher. This teacher left Jojo’s school, Brooklyn Latin, for a better-paying job in Westchester; Brooklyn reminds Jojo that she’s championing an affordable-housing program for teachers.
Founded in 2006, Brooklyn Latin is a well-regarded public magnet school. Westchester is a wealthy suburb of New York City. That Jojo’s teacher left Brooklyn Latin for a more lucrative suburban job despite the school’s good reputation suggests that the school wasn’t giving her enough money to justify her paying rent in Brooklyn anymore—and thus that the ongoing gentrification of Brooklyn may have indirectly caused the teacher to leave. Brooklyn’s attempt to pass affordable-housing legislation shows that she is trying to use her political career to counter gentrification and aid her community.
Themes
Jojo says she can’t see much from her window. When Brooklyn tells Jojo to open the screen, Jojo complains about mosquitoes but opens it. She and Jojo wave at each other from their windows. Suddenly Brooklyn sees a “white and ghostly” object in the backyard of the brownstone her daughter’s occupying—something like a giant four-legged spider. Then another one climbs into the yard. Brooklyn orders Jojo to close her window and go to Clyde’s room. Jojo, “a true child of New York,” realizes there’s a threat and obeys.
Agents of the Enemy/the Woman in White are associated with both the color white and racial whiteness throughout the novel, which emphasizes both the Enemy’s homogeneity and its use of racial prejudices to divide and conquer New York City’s diverse community. That the spider-creatures are “ghostly” as well as “white” reminds the reader that they may exist partly in a parallel universe. Jojo’s sensitivity to threat because she’s “a true child of New York” shows that identifying danger is essential to the concept of being a New Yorker.
Themes
Soon six of the spider-things have entered the brownstone’s backyard. Brooklyn recognizes the “antithesis of presence” they emit from her encounters with the tendrils. She runs out of the first brownstone, hops the gate into the second brownstone’s courtyard, and realizes the problem: she hasn’t entered it since becoming the embodiment of Brooklyn, and the renovation that removed its stoop made it “susceptible to attack by foreign organisms.”
Something’s “antithesis” is its complete opposite. To say that the spider-things and the tendrils are the “antithesis of presence” means that they negate what’s present—that is, they negate New York City. In describing the wheelchair-accessible brownstone as “susceptible to attack by foreign organisms,” the novel is again using language associated with infection and disease to describe the Woman in White’s invasion. This then implies that the conflict between the Woman and the living cities is a merely natural phenomenon, rather than a conflict between intelligent entities with an ethical dimension. That making the brownstone wheelchair-accessible rendered it less characteristic of Brooklyn and therefore vulnerable, meanwhile, shows that what is ethical and diversity-supporting does not always accord with a given city’s essence.
Themes
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A spider-thing slips under the brownstone’s front door. Brooklyn hears a musical beat in her breath and realizes that, as a former battle rapper, she can use those skills to combat the home invasion. Improvising lyrics in her mind, Brooklyn gains physical strength to break open the brownstone’s locked front door. Inside, she destroys a web the spider-thing has woven, runs into Clyde’s bedroom, and—concluding a rhyme—hits the spider-thing, incinerating it. Improvising more lyrics, she strikes the floor and emits “a wave of city-energy” that incinerates all the “contamination” in Brooklyn. Then she collapses.
Brooklyn uses her preferred art form, rap music, to combat the spider-things. That Brooklyn derives power from rap music shows the importance of rap and art more generally to the novel’s concepts of Brooklyn (the borough) and New York City. Here the novel describes the spider-things as a “contamination,” once again using language associated with infection to characterize the Enemy’s attacks. Again, this implies that the battle between the Enemy and the city is merely natural, without the ethical dimension the reader might expect from conflict between intelligent entities.
Themes
Manny enters the room. When Jojo tries to get Brooklyn up, Manny says to let Brooklyn rest and, touching her, shares energy with her. Brooklyn realizes that the energy-sharing Manny has done for her is what she and the other boroughs will need to do for New York City’s avatar, so that he can save the city. Falling asleep, she completes the song she’s been improvising in her head.
That Manny shares energy with Brooklyn—and that all the boroughs will need to share energy with New York City’s avatar—shows the importance of cooperation and community to the avatars’ powers. That Brooklyn completes her rap even after she’s defeated the spider-things, meanwhile, shows that she cares about her art as a craft as well as a means to channel the city’s power.
Themes
The next afternoon, Brooklyn wakes to find Jojo, Clyde, Padmini, and Manny staring at a letter on the table. Clyde tells her it’s an eviction notice. When Brooklyn protests that their family owns the building, Jojo says the city claims they didn’t “pay arrears on taxes.” Brooklyn, who always pays her bills, says it must be a mistake. Clyde says he’s called the city and they’ve really seized and sold the house—the family has a week to move out. Brooklyn examines the letter and finds that her family home has been stolen by an organization called the Better New York Foundation.
Earlier, Brooklyn, Manny, and Padmini took a Lyft even though Brooklyn disapproves of Uber and Lyft’s muscling-out of traditional New York City taxis, which showed how even people theoretically opposed to cultural homogenization and gentrification sometimes cooperate with it. The Better New York Foundation’s theft of Brooklyn’s family’s historic brownstones, however, shows how organizations with power and money can wrest power and property from a city’s locals even without their cooperation.
Themes
