DWBG: The Birth of a City

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin, Prologue-->Ch. 3

Maybe she’s Canadian who has been driven mad by the cold and socialized medicine.

We’re reading this book together in chunks. I think that it’s best to withhold judgment until you’ve finished a story, because there are stories that make absolutely no sense at all until the last page, and then you read that and everything slots into place. You can almost hear the flutter of clicks as the pieces that had seemed chaotic just slip beautifully into place.

For that reason, I’m giving you my immediate responses to the reading as I go through, approaching the piece with curiosity. I stand by nothing I say here; I’m just gathering impressions.

I haven’t read Jemisin yet, but I’m finding it a wonderfully unpredictable ride. I’m not as much of a stickler about predictability in stories as many are, but this whole world and the activity therein lives on the ragged edge of reality where there are no rules.

What I love so far: The wonderful quips; the way the world doesn’t default to white and straight; the absolute weirdness of everything, the way reality shifts and shimmies and I’m never quite sure what the hell is going on. I usually don’t care for that, but something in Jemisin’s writing makes me feel enough trust that I’m not freaking out because I have no idea what the hell is going on.

And just to add insult to injury? I backhand its ass with Hoboken, raining the drunk rage of ten thousand dudebros down on it like the hammer of God. Port Authority makes it honorary New York, motherfucker; you just got Jerseyed.

I’m really enjoying the identity play. As you all know, identity stories are a particular catnip of mine. We open with a first-person account from someone whose name we have not yet (and may never) learn, whose gender and race were also left unclear for quite a while, leaving us to all sit in our presumptions for a bit. I had presumed the narrator in the early part (who we later in this reading come to identify as the primary) was a Black woman, probably because Nemisin is a Black woman? When that presumption was renegotiated, I felt this shift in the reading, where I realized I couldn’t presume anything.

I also liked that white people are not defaulted; when we see a white person, that person is identified as white, which is something that hasn’t happened a lot in our stories, where white has been the default, and we only look at race when it’s non-white. I’m enjoying this shift in perspective as well, because I think the deliberate strategy of making whiteness invisible to white people is part of what gives whiteness such terrible power.

And as I watch, the shorter one begins to… stretch, sort of, his shape warping ever so slightly, until one eye is twice the circumference of the other. His right shoulder slowly develops a bulge that suggests a dislocated joint. His companion doesn’t seem to notice.

Yoooo, nope.

Another thing I really enjoyed here is Jemisin’s work with metaphor. Early on, the cops seem to be a singular monster in a metaphorical sense, but later they become a literal monster in Mega Cop. At first, I thought the tendrils were Mega Cop, but it seemed like the tendrils simply took over some cops and were being controlled by a larger, unseen monster. The tendrils come from something bigger than Mega Cop, something white, which melds with white people and makes them do its bidding...

I mean, I’m seeing a metaphor for white supremacy there, although I could be misreading. You really can’t know what a story is telling you until you finish reading. But the evil white tendrils doing its work through white women, making them exceptionally dangerous… I don’t know. Holds up so far.

On Second, Sixth, and Eighth Avenues, my water breaks. Mains, I mean. Water mains.

I really loved when the city was birthed in the opening. I was expecting that birthing to be the struggle of the book, but it’s not; staying alive amidst forces that want you dead is the struggle of the book. And shifting out of the primary’s perspective and into Manny and Brooklyn and Aislyn was another unexpected move, although clearly the as-yet-unnamed primary is still the primary; the only perspective we experience in first-person.

Favorite Part:

For every reading, I’m going to finish with my favorite part, and it absolutely has to be the moment the primary was running from the Enemy, and darts through traffic to get away:

I go over the barrier and through the grass into fucking hell I go one lane silver cards two lanes horns horns horns three lanes SEMI WHAT’S A FUCKING SEMI DOING ON THE FDR IT’S TOO TALL YOU STUPID UPSTATE HICK screaming four lanes GREEN TAXI screaming Smart Car hahaha cute five lanes moving truck six lanes and the blue Lexus actually brushes up against my clothes as it blares past screaming screaming screaming…

This whole segment is so wonderfully evocative and funny while being in the heat of action, so incredibly poetic and experiential… I love it.

I’m excited to read more, definitely. Now, I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses.

What did you see in this reading? What were your favorite parts? Use the threads here to discuss!