“Bronca likes this view, though, because it makes clear that New York is a city of people, not its businesses and landmarks…they all gotta eat, educate their kids, sleep, and get by somehow.” – N.K. Jemisin, ‘The City We Became’
Boy, reading feels good. My kid has reached an age where he’s excited about reading—he’s not on chapter books yet, though I think we’re right around the corner—and sometimes he gets to stay up a little later in his room, as long as he’s reading. My parents had this rule as a kid, as did another friend-whom-I-regularly-slept-over-with’s parents. Shoutout to the Galloways. Do you have memories of staying up late because you simply couldn’t put a novel down? What happened next was too important to learn? My heart’s racing just thinking about it. This week’s book did that for me.
Oh, and quick before we start: great episode of The Lazy & Entitled Podcast this week, featuring an interview with Shipwrecked Sailor Blog favorite H Kapp-Klote. It’s a great interview, and Brendan really outdid himself with the music on this one. If you haven’t been listening in 2026, you’re missing out on some great interviews and even more great music, nearly all of it stuff that Brendan is basically improvising. Check it out: Apple | Spotify | SoundCloud
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
The first novel since the beginning of January! Gotta tell you dudes, I was craving it. Helps that this one is not only well-written and exciting and genre-bending and totally engrossing, but also part one of a duology. Side note: I have a thing about duologies, like why don’t you make it a trilogy? Or pentology? Why my brain is like this, I’m not sure. I am sure excited to have this series blow up that paradigm for me, though. I’m gonna let it, too. I’m talking, of course, about The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin: it is sort of impossible to describe genre books to non-genre fans without sounding corny. Here is what I texted my parents and brother (a Manhattan resident!) after reading: “the fantasy/horror conceit is that the great cities of the world have human avatars who manifest when a ‘great city’ reaches a ‘certain level of development.’ New York, though, has an avatar for each borough. They must come together to battle a city-killing enemy, and the whole thing is a metaphor for not being xenophobic and insular.” Our leads are Manny (Manhattan, a newcomer with amnesia), Brooklyn (a former rapper turned City Councilwoman, what did N.K. Jemisin know about Young Cardamom and when did she know it), Padmini (Queens, another avatar who was born outside of New York but nevertheless becomes a part of New York), Bronca (The Bronx, a Lenape woman who runs an art gallery that allows people with precarious housing to sleep upstairs), and Aislyn (Staten Island, the daughter of a violent racist Irish cop who has never even been off of Staten Island). Our main antagonist is The Woman In White, a Lovecraftian demon from another dimension. Helping our heroes is (São) Paulo, Hong (Kong), and Veneza, who hails from Jersey City and works at Bronca’s art gallery. The plot is chiefly the team getting together and learning about their powers via a bit of questing and testing, and they must eventually awaken New York City’s primary avatar. this novel does not merely set up Book Two, but know that the metaphor and themes are more important than plot in this action-packed odyssey.
All of that established, let’s get into theme and metaphor. The novel is a well-crafted dramatization of various themes: humans are social animals and some people don’t like admitting that; multiculturalism is good and necessary whereas the fascist ethnostate means death; people will sometimes irrationally choose polite civility over self-preservation; white supremacy is a helluva drug. Tying these themes to cities carries some historical weight. Humans huddle in groups because the night is full of lions and tigers and bears, and cities give us strength in numbers and infrastructure. You can either accept this fact or be scared of it. I’m not saying that people must live in cities, but I am saying that unless you’re a real-deal farmer, you probably should. For all sorts of reasons—environmental, cultural, spiritual. At one point, The Enemy asserts that cities are bad for the environment. Clearly, she’s never sat in Murfreesboro traffic.
“Can you accept others as people” is the central question everyone, not just the idiot borough, has to deal with. Your mileage may vary, but I admire how much this novel is trying to get at the central conflict of our time. Well, not the rising tides of fascism—that’s the next book in the duology. But this xenophobic aspect that undergirds the march to fascism, yes. I love this novel.
I don’t have time to get into or really compare and contrast where this sits in other great “people represent places” novels, like The Tin Drum or Midnight’s Children. TCWB is not magical realism, it’s very much eldritch horror written by a fantasy writer. Something Brendan said about an anime he’s watching made me realize how much there’s a questing aspect to this novel, too. There’s just not enough space to get into it all here, but honestly? I will probably be re-reading it in 2027.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Hey, it’s Punk Rock Year and Black History Month, and yet we still haven’t listened to FUPU, aka Fuck You Pay Us. Apparently, these dudes really live the punk rock ethos, are feminist and queer and outspoken in their antiracism, and to go to one of their shows is to believe a better world is possible. Let’s check out a YouTube video—of which there are shockingly few, at least on first search. Anyway, please follow Lazy & Entitled on all socials.
- This week in ICE: Operation Midway Blitz fallout lingers in Latino neighborhoods by Araceli Gómez-Aldana and Michael Puente in WBEZ, ‘No one deserves this’: Beaverton father dies after deportation to Mexico by Mikhala Armstrong in Fox 12 Oregon, Party to the Conflict: Eugene Fights Back Against the Feds in Crimethinc., and Why Is The Cook County State’s Attorney Prosecuting Nonviolent ICE Protesters? by Mina Bloom in Block Club
- Here’s something super cool: Chicago’s Newberry Library gets $4 million to help tribal nations revitalize Indigenous languages by Courtney Kueppers in WBEZ
- I cancelled my Netflix this week. It’s almost as expensive as my whole internet bill used to be when I first graduated college, and the product is shit. For every new Knives Out or Mike Flanagan or The Ritual, there’s an ocean of shit that actively hates its viewers. In The City We Make, when The Enemy is most baring down on New York and the physical space of the city is unnaturally shadowed, almost desaturated? That’s how watching Netflix shows make me feel. Sorry for the mini-rant, but aside from sports and Twin Peaks, what could you possibly want to watch on streaming that isn’t on HBO or Tubi? Anyway, here’s TV brain rot: The real reason television shows are getting stupider by Louis Chilton in The Independent
- Speaking of TV brain, here’s an excellent blog from L&E favorite Lincoln Michel, What Not Reading Does to Your Writing
- A couple more Jesse Jackson rememberences: Jesse Jackson’s vision for America embraced environmental justice by Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco in WBEZ.
- Black History Month is the shortest month, so here’s a bonus link for the sake of Black history: The Chicago Black Renaissance is Harlem’s radical counterpart by Crystal Hill in The Triibe
What’re you still doing here? Should we listen to more FUPU? Maybe a set dedicated to Black trans women all around the world?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If I can give you a blessing from each of the five borough’s representatives: may you be adaptable like Manny, fearless in the face of racism like Bronca, quick-thinking like Padmini, and able to Do It All While Parenting like Brooklyn. I’m sure Aislyn has some admirable qualities, too, but I haven’t gotten to them yet.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris