The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

    It’s difficult to explain the plot of The City We Became. It starts with a homeless kid. He’s New York, as in the city of New York – and he needs help. There are five avatars who are supposed to help him, but first they have to find him.

A man arrives in New York City and suddenly collapses. He doesn’t remember who is or where he’s from, but he knows he is Manhattan. A woman in Queens watches in horror as a couple neighbor kids are about to be swallowed by their pool and she realizes she has to help them and stop what’s happening and, in that moment, she realizes she is Queens. Women in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have similar experiences. The world suddenly shifts and they realize that they are the personification of their boroughs of their city.

I loved this. I loved it so much that I’m mad that I have to wait for the next book in the series. I loved the personification of the boroughs. Bronca, the Bronx avatar, is a queer Lenape woman who runs an art center. As a Lenape woman in the oldest of the NYC’s boroughs, she possesses the knowledge of and history of the city and what’s happening to it. Brooklyn is a rapper turned politician. She hears the city. Padmini, a Tamil immigrant graduate student, is the avatar of Queens, the borough of a starting over. Manhattan’s avatar, Manny, is a racially ambiguous new transplant to New York. He can’t remember his past and not sure if he wants to. He reflects the borough’s mix of cultures and edginess. Aislyn is the avatar of Staten Island. She never leaves her borough; her abusive father having impressed upon on her how the city is not for people like her. Of all the avatars, Aislyn is the most susceptible to the villain’s machinations.

Speaking of the villain, in old westerns the good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy a black hat. The white = good and black = bad is a trope that has been repeated ad nauseam. Jemisin flips this around, making the “woman in white” the villain. When the woman infects someone or something, white tendrils start growing out of them or it and you know no good will come of it.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this book. It did take a minute to get into it, but once I understood what was happening, I was all in. I really hope book 2 comes out soon.