2020 read #5: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
437 pages
Published 2020
Read from June 16 to June 23
Rating: 5 out of 5

This is easily one of my favorite books I've ever encountered.

Pretty much every review and article for this book has touched upon its immediate relevance to the world of 2020. Not long after it was published, New York City became the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Murders and countless other abuses continually committed by the police finally opened a powerful wellspring of popular rage against the injustices intrinsic to the American political and judicial system, rage answered in turn by further acceleration of authoritarianism and new abuses of power, astounding in their brazen disregard for the cellphone cameras and news crews recording every detail. The crawling eldritch horrors of white supremacy are fighting in the streets to maintain their strangehold on this land we inhabit, furious to lose even one concession, even one drop of power to those people. This novel might feel like a tome of prophecy, if one were a sheltered white ally unaware of the dictatorship of white supremacy within this country, and the tools of murder, genocide, economic strangulation, and terror it has employed against Black and Indigenous peoples since the 1400s. In reality, The City We Became is merely reportage, dressed in elements of fantasy.

The way Jemisin roots her extradimensional abominations in the real-life Lovecraft, who found his source of horror and revulsion in the diversity of American city life, is one of the most skilled and profound uses of genre, and the language of genre, I've ever read in fantasy fiction. 4Chan bigots and the NYPD exist as eager pawns of an eldritch agenda of genocide, grounding the tentacle horrors with far more real, far more insidious horrors of modern life, like doxxing, swatting, and sexual violence. This book gave me a deeper sense of dread than any horror fiction I've ever read.

But Jemisin must also be praised for her creation of the avatars of New York's boroughs. Without giving too much away, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan one and all possess the swagger and righteous fury of Jemisin's best work and most memorable characters. For every anxiety-inducing encounter with the forces of white supremacy's evil, there's an answering FUCK YES moment from one or more of the living embodiments of New York City. I'm not ashamed to say I nearly pumped my fist in the air on more than one occasion.

I'm blessed to have spent enough time in New York to have a general sense of its feel and its flavor, but even without that background, the love and energy poured into this book glimmers through. The City We Became is fucking amazing.