The City We Became | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book List: The Horror of Gentrification

When the topic of redevelopment comes up, affected residents need a seat at the table. If developers and city government aren’t interested in the needs and wants of the existing community, any “revitalizing” is for people who aren’t already there. Gentrification has had the effect of displacing people and institutions that have been in the same neighborhood for decades and replacing their homes with higher-end residences they can’t afford, expensive office space, or shopping and restaurants, with far-reaching consequences. It affects Black, brown, and indigenous people the most, but, even when it’s well-intended, it’s ALWAYS about making money.

When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole ( Bookshop.org )

After leaving her abusive husband, Sydney returns home to her mother’s Brooklyn brownstone, in an area which is rapidly gentrifying before her eyes, with her neighbors disappearing mysteriously at a rapid rate as well-to-do white couples move in. As Sydney investigates the history of Brooklyn, she realizes there is a cycle that connects to disturbing events of the present. When No One Was Watching gets into eugenics and medical experimentation and is grounded in some real historical events.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin ( Bookshop.org )

In Jemisin’s book, the follow-up to her story “The City Born Great”, every major city has a human avatar. New York City, however, is so large that each borough needs one. Enter the Better Way Foundation, a front for a potential eldritch invasion of Lovecraftian proportions, though The Better Way Foundation, represented by Dr. White (I know…) This book has great LGBTQ+ representation, as well as indigenous, Black, brown, and Indian-American characters. Read our review here.

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Gentrification is not limited to New York City. Black Water Sister takes place in Malaysia. Malaysian-American Jess was anxious about coming out of the closet. That’s small potatoes now that she is being haunted by her estranged, recently deceased grandmother, Ah Ma, who was a spirit medium for the goddess Black Water Sister and needs Jess to stop a developer from tearing down the vengeful goddess’ temple for a condo development. I asked my daughter how she would feel about being possessed by a bossy grandmother obsessed with zoning (her grandmother is, in fact, obsessed with zoning), and the expression on her face was one of horror. And that’s not even the scariest part. Vengeance is bloody business. For my part, I thought Ah Ma’s interactions with Jess were really entertaining. You wouldn’t want to get on that lady’s bad side. Side note: a lot of the dialogue is written in Manglish, but I found it easy to follow and understand.

Cover art for My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones ( Bookshop.org )

Gentrification occurs in rural and suburban communities as well as cities. In this love letter to the slasher movie, Jade Daniels, a troubled high-school of Blackfoot descent, uses her knowledge of horror movies and their tropes to navigate the town’s soon-to-be slasher story as wealthy gentrifiers begin building an exclusive enclave in her working class community. As you would expect from a slasher-inspired story, this has plenty of blood and gore.

Gentrification’s effects aren’t limited to the living, either. How many haunted house stories depend on one building or neighborhood being built over the homes and lives of others? Here’s a link to a ghostly meditation on the effects of live people on ghosts who were simply haunting their own village.

Book Review: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Orbit, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0316509848

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

The City We Became is the first book in a trilogy based on a short story by N.K. Jemisin titled “The City Born Great”, which focused on a young homeless Black man who becomes the avatar for New York City as it literally comes alive, and successfully battles a cosmic attack aimed at killing the city at great expense to himself.

The book begins after the events of the story, and if you haven’t read the story the beginning may be a little disorienting. The exhausted avatar of New York City, who sustained significant damage to himself, is hidden away and sleeping. It turns out that one person is not enough to sustain the life of an entire city. The five boroughs of New York, each with a distinct character, each have an avatar come alive that can defend their borough, and when they come together, they will be able to find and wake the avatar for New York City with their combined strength. They just have to find each other, choose to take on the responsibility of being their city as well as themselves, and overcome the “Woman in White,” a powerful representative from a cosmic force in an alternate reality. With one exception they are a colorful, multiracial, and argumentative group, but when push comes to shove, they are all New Yorkers who stand together. Manhattan is a younger, gay man who developed amnesia when he entered the city, but who obviously had a background steeped in violence. He has come to New York to work on a graduate degree in political science. Brooklyn is an older Black woman who was a rap artist in the early years of rap music but is now a mother and member of the city council. The Bronx is a no-nonsense part-Lenape feminist lesbian professor of fine arts who directs a nonprofit arts center for marginalized artists and members of the community. Queens is an undocumented Indian student with a gift for math who is interning on Wall Street in hopes of gaining a path to citizenship.

But Staten Island stands back from the rest of the city. She is a young white woman living in a conventional family with a father who is an abusive, xenophobic, racist cop and a mother who is a passive alcoholic housewife. She barely qualifies to work at the library, and has been cautioned about the awful people in the city and the terrible things that could happen to her there. When someone encourages her to read Lovecraft, his work confirms for her what “those people” are like (anyone who has ever said “it’s just fiction, not life” please take note). Despite the awful things that have happened to her within the walls of her own home (ranging from smashed self-esteen to attempted rape), she is more concerned with keeping others out than escaping it herself. As a white woman, it was heartbreaking for me to see her ignorance and obvious complicity with not just human but cosmic evil. I’m not familiar with Staten Island, but I really hope the portrayal here is not totally congruent with reality,

In The City We Became, extradimensional evil has grown more complex: better at planning in a way that, when cities begin to come alive, groundwork to kill it is already in place. The art gallery is attacked online by alt-right “artists” funded by a clearly sinister foundation led by the “Woman in White”, resulting in the staff getting doxxed and recieving death threats, and the building nearly burned down (this part of the book is terrifying). Brooklyn and her family are evicted from property they own outright by the same foundation, in the name of gentrification. Every chain store that replaced a community institution and changed the character of the boroughs and the city is killing it. Will Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens be able to revive the avatar of New York and save the city without the help of Staten Island, or will the city die, to be replaced with something more sinister and destructive?

While The City We Became touched on a lot of important issues (gentrification being a big one) it is also a love letter to New York City and its boroughs. Seeing the people Jemisin imagined as being these cities brought a new vividness into the way I think about the city and I loved meeting her main characters. I do feel like this book left a lot of loose ends. Who is Manhattan, really? Will we see more of his roommate? Where will the homeless avatar for New York go next? What finally happens to Staten Island? How do things change for the avatars when they go back to their daily lives? This is the first book in a trilogy, so I hope we’ll find out shortly. Recommended.

Contains: attempted rape, domestic abuse, violence, racism, body horror, tentacles