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Padmini Prakash (Queens)
An assistant at the Bronx Art Center where Bronca, Yijing, and Jess work, Veneza is a half-Black, half-Portuguese former art school student from Jersey City, New Jersey. Bronca considers Veneza a great friend and something of a daughter figure. When a right-wing art collective called the Alt Artistes, infected by the Woman in White’s tendrils, attacks Bronca with an interdimensional portal hidden inside a racist painting, Veneza saves her. Because Veneza senses the Woman in White’s presence in a way Bronca’s other colleagues do not, Bronca tells Veneza the truth about the interdimensional attack on New York City, though she warns her to stay out of the fight. Nevertheless, Veneza uses her online savvy to protect Bronca and her colleagues from the Alt Artistes’ online harassment and, later, helps figure out that the Better New York Foundation is part of a global organization seeking to gentrify and thus weaken cities before their births. Before the final confrontation with the Woman in White, Bronca insists that Veneza leave the city for her safety. Veneza complies, but one of the Woman in White’s minions kidnaps her. When Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, and Hong arrive at Aislyn’s house to seek her help in the battle against the Woman in White, the Woman threatens Veneza’s life. Aislyn, horrified but loyal to the Woman, banishes Bronca, Brooklyn, Padmini, Hong, and Veneza from Staten Island. Afterward, Veneza travels with Bronca, Brooklyn, and Padmini to join Manny to try to wake New York City’s avatar from his coma. Without Aislyn’s help, though, the other four boroughs can’t wake New York City’s avatar—until Veneza transforms into the avatar of Jersey City, an honorary though not official part of New York. With Veneza’s help, the others wake New York City’s avatar and drive the Woman in White out of every part of the city except Staten Island. Veneza’s transformation into an honorary borough represents how, in the novel, true community is about solidarity in diversity rather than mere legal and political definitions.
Veneza (Jersey City) Quotes in The City We Became
The The City We Became quotes below are all either spoken by Veneza (Jersey City) or refer to Veneza (Jersey City). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
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.
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Chapter 7
Quotes
“I keep thinking about how, at the park, she kept switching between ‘we’ and ‘I’ like the pronouns were interchangeable. Like she couldn’t keep the words straight, and they didn’t really matter anyway.”
“Maybe this isn’t her first language.”
That’s partly it. But Manny suspects the problem is less linguistic than contextual. She doesn’t get English because English draws a distinction between the individual self and the collective plural, and wherever she comes from, whatever she is, that difference doesn’t mean the same thing. If there’s a difference at all.
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Chapter 16
Quotes
“Living cities aren’t defined by politics,” he says. It’s almost a shout, so urgently does he speak. “Not by city limits or county lines. They’re made of whatever the people who live in and around them believe.”
Get the entire The City We Became LitChart as a printable PDF.
Veneza (Jersey City) Quotes in The City We Became
The The City We Became quotes below are all either spoken by Veneza (Jersey City) or refer to Veneza (Jersey City). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
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.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
“I keep thinking about how, at the park, she kept switching between ‘we’ and ‘I’ like the pronouns were interchangeable. Like she couldn’t keep the words straight, and they didn’t really matter anyway.”
“Maybe this isn’t her first language.”
That’s partly it. But Manny suspects the problem is less linguistic than contextual. She doesn’t get English because English draws a distinction between the individual self and the collective plural, and wherever she comes from, whatever she is, that difference doesn’t mean the same thing. If there’s a difference at all.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16
Quotes
“Living cities aren’t defined by politics,” he says. It’s almost a shout, so urgently does he speak. “Not by city limits or county lines. They’re made of whatever the people who live in and around them believe.”
