In one scene, the heroes recognize the Woman in White’s influence when they see a Starbucks where a beloved community space used to be. Literal tentacles destroy the Williamsburg bridge and cause a traffic jam on FDR Drive, but more significantly, the Woman in White also buys up real estate to turn into condos or coffee shops. I also love how the villainous Woman in White sinks her tentacles into the city both literally and figuratively. the brownstone for Brooklyn, the apartment complex of immigrants for Padmini), and how all of these come into play in the story. I love how each of them draws power from something that’s rooted in the spirit of their respective boroughs (e.g. And finally there’s Aislynn (Staten Island), the timid white woman who is scared to take the ferry into the city, and who grew up with a lot of prejudices about immigrant and persons of colour.Įach of these characters is so vividly drawn, both as human beings and as allegories for the boroughs they represent.

There’s Padmini (Queens), the mathematician from Chennai who is in NYC on a student visa. There’s Bronca (Bronx), the Lenape arts centre administrator, who’s the only one of the five that was ‘reborn’ knowing the group’s history and purpose. There’s Brooklyn, the badass Black city council member who used to be a rapper and who lives in a brownstone with her dad and daughter. The characters felt real, but I think they will also resonate much more strongly for those with an emotional connection to NYC.įirst, there’s Manny (Manhattan), the brash and charming ethnically ambiguous newcomer who finds power in a cab ride and in dollar bills. It made me wish I grew up in New York City, or even that I just lived there now. I find her books brilliant - they’re multilayered and reveal more with each re-reading.

They must band together and find the living embodiment of New York as a single, wholly encompassing city, so that they can defeat the Woman in White, an other-dimensional being determined to stop New York City from being ‘born.’ In it, five New Yorkers are ‘reborn’ into the living embodiments of the five NYC boroughs. The City We Became is a full-out, unapologetic, in-your-face homage to New York City.

The city that we became