She’s become a symbol of a specific kind of middle-class white lady propriety: She prioritizes niceness and civility over meaningful resistance, and she tells the rest of the avatars to get off her lawn. Instead, Aislyn chooses to ally with her oppressor, even though she knows, subconsciously, that the Woman in White wants to hurt her. And Staten Island, which prides itself on its insularity, and which the rest of the boroughs consistently forget about and deprioritize - Staten Island refuses to join up entirely. But the Bronx, which is more isolated, is more reluctant to join the team. Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn form a unit easily enough, which makes sense, because the populations of those three boroughs mingle and intermix plenty on a daily basis. At least not the five we thought were going to. But here in the final chapters, the boroughs don’t unite. The boroughs assemble … sort ofįor most of The City We Became, it’s seemed as though the book’s big, driving quest would be to unite the five boroughs of New York, and that only together would they be able to awaken New York’s avatar and defeat the Woman in White.

We’ve got a team of superheroes/cities assembled, a Lovecraftian monster to fight, and some moral dilemmas to wrestle with. In the meantime, let’s get into our last chapters here. You can sign up to attend the event here. It’ll be a gas! At the end, we’ll announce our book pick for next month, and the club will continue. Jemisin herself (my fondest dream for this event is that putting two computer screens between us will prevent me from passing out with awe), and you will be able to submit questions too. Discussing The City We Became with all of you has been a real source of joy for me during this very hard time, and I hope that it has been a joy for you as well.Īnd I hope you’ll join us for our live event on April 29! We’ll be meeting on Zoom, where I’ll have a talk with the legendary N.K. Thank you all for coming along on the ride, both those of you who commented and made these discussions so much richer and more thoughtful, and those of you who clicked and read and talked about the book elsewhere. We’re finishing the book, and I for one have some feelings about it. Jemisin’s The City We Became, in which we tackle everything from chapter 11 through the coda.

Welcome to the Vox Book Club’s third week of discussion on N.K.

The city we became nk jemisin