THE CITY WE BECAME + FRIDAY BLACK: On the choices & futures we make

Season 1, Episode 6 Transcript

T: Happy Wednesday! I’m Tamara Crawford, here with Vina Orden. And this is The Lift Up Podcast — inviting you to discover empowering reads by marginalized writers. In this Episode #6, our penultimate episode of the season, we’re discussing two amazing books, The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin and Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Friday Black, published in 2018, is a collection of short stories that defy genre conventions, with an almost Black Mirror feel to them. Some are set in a recognizable present-day, and others hint at near-futures. Adjei-Brenyah presents this bleak reality in unexpected ways — at times with humor, always with empathy — and prods us to work past indifference and complacency to imagining and creating the world we want to live in now.

It has been listed by Publishers Weekly along with the New York Post as one of the best books of the week as well as named by Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post as one of the top releases of fall 2018. It was mentioned in various periodicals such as The Harvard Crimson, Kirkus Reviews, and Newsday for its ingenuity in illuminating characteristics of American society with humor and empathy. Additionally, the National Book Foundation named Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah among their “5 Under 35 Authors” for 2018, chosen by author Colson Whitehead, and Friday Black was included on the longlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction. It was also the recipient of the 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and shortlisted for the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize.

The City We Became, published in 2020, is the first installment in the upcoming The Great Cities Trilogy. Set in a parallel universe in present-day New York City, it is close to our hearts as New Yorkers. Each borough is embodied by an avatar, which to Jemisin is a physical manifestation of the borough’s “soul,” a protector and repository of its history (an idea she borrows from Hindu and Chinese cultures). She also invites readers to think about what community means and what’s worth protecting and fighting for.

N.K. Jemisin is a highly nominated and decorated sci-fi writer — the list of her awards and nominations are so long to list here for this intro, however we want to highlight her as the first sci-fi writer to win a triple Hugo Award for her The Broken Earth Trilogy series, as well as a multiple-time winner of the Locus Award in 2011 and 2018 for Best First Novel and Best Fantasy Novel respectively, Nebula Award winner for Best Novel in 2018, multiple-time Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award winner for Best Fantasy Novel in 2010 and 2012, and American Library Association’s Alex Award winner in 2019 for How Long ’til Black Future Month? Most recently, she won the Hugo Award in 2020 for Best Novelette, Emergency Skin.

So, let’s get right to it …

Hi, Vina. I am so glad we are covering these two books for this month’s episode! I read Friday Black quite a while ago and knew I really wanted to talk about it, and I’ve been dying to read books by N.K. Jemisin — so what a perfect opportunity.

V: Thank you so much for introducing me to Friday Black. I mean, it’s unlike any other short story collection I’ve read — we’ll get into that more later. But first, a shout-out to listener and friend of the pod, Camille, who recommended we read N.K. Jemisin this month, specifically her Broken Earth Trilogy, which really is a must-read … I mean, each time I finished a book in the series, I wanted to read more until I finally got to the end. And I was like, This can’t be the end! So, I’m really excited that N.K. Jemisin is starting this new “Great Cities” series and that the first novel in it, The City We Became, is set right here in New York City!

T: I know — definitely! Friday Black was such an exciting collection of short stories to read. And, thank you to Camille for introducing us to N.K. Jemisin’s work — I can’t wait to talk about this book!

So, I think it would be good for us to start off talking a little bit about the recent NPR Code Switch Podcast episode about books that you shared with me earlier in September. Because, what was interesting about this podcast is the discussion on whether or not, during this time of pandemic and social and racial unrest, it is better to read pandemic-type books or escapist-type books.

To start off this conversation — for me, I have always read to escape. It was always a way for me to cope with what was going on around me. There’s just so much going on in the world that I get fed from the news, from social media, from talking to people on a daily basis, from my own experiences, that the only way I keep my sanity is to read books that help me escape what’s going on around me, because quite frankly, everyday I can’t escape. I tend to gravitate more to books that allow me to see a different world, a different life, and a different experience, which allows me to use my imagination in various ways … Which is why I’m a really big fan of the escapist books that we’ve started. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for books that are more in tune with the reality around us. But because we’re constantly living that reality, I definitely feel the need to read something different in order to protect my sanity.

You know, some of the books we’ve been reading since the beginning of this podcast have been very heavy — and rightfully so — because they illuminate the world around us and some of the issues that we are facing and have been facing for a long time. But, I will admit that reading some of those books was very difficult for me to get through, and without the podcast and this forum to talk about them, I probably wouldn’t have finished them even though they were amazing books by amazing authors.

For example, I’m still trying to finish Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead after starting it back in 2017. It is such a good book, but it evokes such an angry feeling because he deftly illuminates slavery and the process of escaping and the desire to escape, that I can’t read it without this deep upset feeling that stays with me for a long while (and again, this is a testament to the power of his writing). However, I was able to finish his Intuitionist because, while it illuminated similar racial issues in a different time, it also gave me this world to escape to that held me. And I know I’ll definitely finish Underground Railroad at some point, but it has made me realize I have to have balance with my reads.

So, similar to reading The City We Became and Friday Black — because, even though they touch on some of these critical points around those issues especially around the social, racial, and economic issues within society and particularly New York City within The City We Became, the way that they’ve written it — and especially the way Jemisin has written The City We Became — they’ve done it in such an other-world kind of way that they lost me completely in the work and I really enjoyed it.

V: That is an interesting observation about reading Underground Railroad vs. Intuitionist. And I do agree that when I try to pay attention to everything going on in the world right now, my anxiety and depression just skyrockets. So, I often find I have to cut myself off from social media — Twitter especially — and immerse myself in good books instead. So, I’m grateful for this podcast and for our conversations, which I feel are focused on more creative rather than destructive things.

And I’m also glad for a break from realist fiction and nonfiction. I love that N.K. Jemisin calls writers, particularly sci-fi and fantasy writers, “engineers of possibility.” Oddly, you know, I think that’s why I only started reading this genre in adulthood. I mean, you get so frustrated by politicians and businesspeople, especially in wealthy countries, who fail to move the needle on problems like food insecurity, or clean air and water, or affordable healthcare — really, basic human rights — and you realize that it’s actually creative people, like artists and writers, who give us a vision forward, who are actually the ones coming up with really inventive solutions.

All that said, I’m sure you’re not surprised that I’ve been on team post-apocalyptic reads even before this pandemic. I mean, my beach read last summer was Ling Ma’s Severance, which came out in 2018. And it’s this novel about a workaholic New Yorker who is among the survivors of a global pandemic called Shen Fever, which originated from factories in Shenzhen, where people were forced to work under hazardous conditions. And those who contract Shen Fever end up repeating their daily routine, over and over again, until they die of boredom and monotony. And so, it’s this brilliant story and critique of globalization and hyper-capitalism, but it’s also so strange and just really inconceivable that a year later, here we are, working from home and suffering from cabin fever because of a real global pandemic!

I also read Octavia Butler’s Parable Series after the 2016 election. These books came out in the ’90s, but the themes she explores — climate change, corporate greed, and the extreme wealth gap — resonate today. And in the second book, Parable of the Talents, there are scary parallels in terms of what’s happening politically in the US right now. So basically, democracy collapses when a charismatic populist-turned-fascist President Andrew Steele Jarret, carries out a crusade against non-Christians and re-institutes enslavement under the slogan — and I kid you not — “Make America Great Again.” I mean, it isn’t surprising that earlier this month, Butler’s Parable of the Sower made The New York Times Bestseller List — although it’s really shocking that she never made it on the list in her lifetime, for someone who’s won the highest awards in sci-fi —you know, the Hugo and the Nebula awards — multiple times, and she’s really the only sci-fi writer who’s ever won the MacArthur “genius” grant.

But ultimately, coming back to this conversation about pandemic reads, I do think that I feel reality too deeply that I’m unable to fully escape it. So, for me, pandemic/post-apocalyptic reads, they actually help me interrogate this moment that we’re in and understand it more. And by reading Butler and Jemisin, they remind me that I’m not alone, and that we can overcome anything when we’re part of a community that’s larger and stronger than whomever or whatever it is that we’re battling.

T: Yup, there’s an argument for both! And basically, it’s what makes you feel comfortable, what helps you get through it, which is what I think they got to at the end of that podcast as well.

So, let’s start today’s book chat by talking about Friday Black. I remember reading this book earlier on in the year and just being sucked in through the first story, “The Finklestein 5,” and how timely and saddening this story was, as it provided a view of what could happen when people have had enough and no longer feel protected, thus pushing them to retaliate. And I remember finishing that story on the bus and just feeling so sad and so upset on the walk home as I turned that story over in my head and the points it was referencing, but I knew I was thoroughly engaged in this book, and without disappointment.

The beauty of Adjei-Brenyah’s short stories is his ability not only to quickly and vividly build his characters, but also have them meaningfully develop in challenging, fantastical, and at times dystopian circumstances, while providing a unique look at the real-world themes in an engaging and enlightening way. For example, when I think of the short story, “The Era,” this story pulled me in based on the concept that a new, theoretically better world has emerged where people are good and honest but kept that way through the administration of Good. Now, Good is an injection which is meant to suppress emotions and keep people supposedly rational, therefore leading to this concept of a better-functioning and transparent society. But what I found interesting is how the young protagonist is dealing with his own conflict around the use of Good — his apparent addiction to it, and how, even in this new society, his socioeconomic status still has an impact on his interactions and acceptance from others. And it’s very interesting that this story also highlights the impact of constructs from the previous era, such as classism, intellectual hierarchies, etc. that still pervade in what’s meant to be this better-functioning society.

V: Yeah. And I mentioned earlier that reading Adjei-Brenyah and the stories in Friday Black was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways. I mean, you mentioned that story “The Finklestein 5,” and I felt like I did have to sit with that story for a while. I had to read that story, put the book down, and then come back to it because it was just that powerful. And I was just really most surprised that his voice and really his imaginative, genre-bending, political, and culturally-critical stories “survived” (for a lack of a better word) a writing MFA program.

Actually, last week, there was this really provocative article by Eric Bennett published in The Chronicle of Higher Education called “How America Taught the World to Write Small.” So, I’ve taken close to a dozen writing workshops and craft seminars now over the years, and I’m used to reading stories that are exactly as Bennett describes — “a literature of individualism and domesticity,” and I’ve often wondered why, as he puts it, “American writers still render the bedroom or kitchen more deftly than the zeitgeist or the world situation,” and I was surprised to learn that it’s because prestigious writing programs, like the ones at Iowa and Stanford, grew out of a Cold War environment and promoted this kind of literature that’s “friendly to capitalism and hospitable to democracy.” And he writes about how these writing programs were exported to other countries and even funded by the US government as part of anti-communist propaganda.

T: Wow!

V: I know — this is something that just completely blew my mind! But, I did go on this tangent because I wanted to make this fun connection … Because in the article, Bennet cites Gina Apostol — a favorite and often-referenced author on this podcast — who studied at Silliman University’s National Summer Writers Workshop, which was founded by two Iowa alums, Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, in 1962. And, in true Gina fashion, she likened the Tiempos’ program to

Spam: an unhealthy American import preposterously offered up as natural [I mean, it’s true]. At Silliman she claims she “felt a kind of castration (for a woman writer always has balls, you know)” [I’m just hearing Gina’s voice …] and argued that the “Filipino short story in English [so, in this program, you weren’t allowed to write in Tagalog, or Waray, or other local language], as defined by Silliman, seemed too narrow for my — or my country’s — interests.” [And Bennet writes,] What the Tiempos learned from Engle [at Iowa] they codified at the expense of the literary fate of a nation, and writers today are still fighting it.

So, going back to Friday Black, I found it refreshing that Adjei-Brenyah, like many of the marginalized writers we’ve been reading, confronts the problems in American society — even “sacred” concepts like individualism and capitalism. And, by making the personal political in these stories, he really makes us see the consequences of things like self-centeredness, and racism, and violence, and he forces us to think more deeply and have conversations about these issues.

So, for instance, I think about one of the stories in the collection, “Zimmer Land.” It’s about an employee at the injustice theme park “Zimmer Land” named Isaiah/Zay, who works at the most profitable module in the park, Cassidy Lane. Zay’s role is to play “a young [Black] man who is up to no good or nothing at all,” and patrons pay to be “the head of the neighborhood watch.” There are echoes of Trayvon Martin in this story, including its title.

Adjei-Brenyah talks about how he was in college in 2012 when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Florida by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman for looking “suspicious,” walking around in their gated community in a hoodie. He shares this story about how he and a friend were up all night, creating pamphlets and distributing them around campus. But at the end of the day, nothing happened — they just saw a janitor sweeping away the pamphlets littered around campus. And Adjei-Brenyah says the experience taught him a lesson:

Rather than saying: ‘This is me and my wisdom and this is how you do it and live your life,’ what I learned is to ask questions instead … Because even asking questions creates some kind of truth.

And, we really see this in the story’s dialogue, where the patron asks seemingly harmless questions, but Zay’s mimicry of those questions in his answers show us the sense of entitlement embedded in the patron’s questions. I’m just gonna read a little bit here:

“Now you wait just a second. I want to know what you’re doing here.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask. The patron’s cheeks get red. Then his chest puffs out. He steps up onto the sidewalk so we can be about the same height.

“I live here. This is my home. I belong here.”

“So do I,” I say.

“You still haven’t answered my question. What is it you’re doing here?”

“You haven’t answered my question either,” I say.

He moves his head to look around, then focuses back on me.

“I just did. I live here. That’s what I’m doing. Living. Now what are you doing?”

“Same,” I say. “Living.” Then I turn my back to him to keep walking away.

“You listen to me. I don’t want any trouble. I’m asking you a simple question.” He raises his voice, so I do, too.

“I’m not answering any of your questions,” I say, turning back to look at him. His hands hover near his waistline.

“Then I’m gonna have to ask you to get on outta here.”

“You in charge?” I ask, “You’re the boss of the world?”

“To you I am. Now fuck outta here.”

“What?” I say.

“I said get the fuck outta here!” the patron says. He’s screaming at me.

… The orgometal on my legs and chest expands, and I can feel it synching to my body. The orgometal hugs me tighter, and soon I can’t tell where the machine starts and the human begins …

“Fuck you,” I say, and it’s easy to be a convincing actor. The orgometal makes the pants that were baggy tight. Same for my shirt. I become a huge block of muscle. Something different, more dangerous than a man … The patron’s eyes go wide for a second. I locate: I’m a kid hit by a stranger … Then I walk toward him. I take two steps. He points the handgun at me. I locate: your life is in the hands of someone who doesn’t even know you and thinks you don’t deserve it.

“Wait,” I say. He shoots.

T: Yeah, really powerful story. And even with “Zimmer Land,” it took me a while to make that connection because I found that I was focusing on the idea in the story of using a theme park to try and contain or prevent another racist- driven death by providing this grim outlet in the form of a theme park.

V: Yes — macabre.

T: Yeah, and I think Zay — there are points in the story where he is questioned about why is he actually working there — and I do think he really believes that he’s trying to do something good and provide a greater good until the park decides to admit children. And that’s when, it seems in the story, he realizes the park and its clientele will now be teaching children how to behave, to behave in this way, therefore negating any good he thought he was doing by containing it within this space. And I think the way Adjei-Brenyah wrote it, I could feel Zay becoming deflated as he reads the new Zimmer Land mission statement and he starts to see the impact the park has on newly admitted youth, especially the interactions with one of the fathers who’s come into the theme park and brought his son …

So, the other story that stood out for me was the titular story, “Friday Black.”

V: Yes, so I think around the world, people associate Americans with hyper-consumerism, unfortunately. But I can only imagine what people think when, every year since at least 2006, they see footage of rabid Americans champing at the bit as they wait online for the Walmart or the mall to open, then trampling or even shooting each other to death as they race to the “Black Friday” deals and sales. So, I don’t know if people there are familiar with it …

T: Uh yeah, we are. We’re starting to get a similar “Black Friday” culture, but I know that people are trying to push against it as well and kind of keep Boxing Day for family rather than shopping …

V: As it should! I mean, it’s just gotten so gruesome, and it just happens every year. Someone actually started a website called Black Friday Death Count.

T: Oh, that’s so morbid.

V: Yeah. And as someone who worked in retail for many years, Adjei-Brenyah just captures that insanity so well in “Friday Black” —and it’s just effective satire because it’s only a slight exaggeration of the truth. So, the narrator of the story — the store’s most successful Black Friday salesperson — describes watching the customers waiting at the entrance to the store:

Ravenous humans howl. Our gate whines and rattles as they shake and pull, their grubby fingers like worms through the grating …

Ever since that first time, since the bite [he was bitten by a customer], I can speak Black Friday. Or I can understand it, at least. Not fluently, but well enough … I hear the people, the sizes, the model, the make, and the reason. Even if all they’re doing is foaming at the mouth.

… Most of the customers can’t speak in real words; the Friday Black has already taken most of their minds.

But then we learn that the narrator is a minimum-wage worker (despite the store’s million-dollar Black Friday sales) who took the job after his mother lost hers, and that his motivation in being the best salesman is to win his mother the most expensive coat they sell in the store. It’s a heartbreaking story for so many reasons, including how many Americans equate the accumulation of things with “success” and their value as a person, or as their family’s breadwinner … The Protestant work and prosperity ethic is just that deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness.

T: Yeah, and I’d agree that Adjei-Brenyah was so vivid in his depiction of Black Friday (and the very clever titling of the story as “Friday Black” to portray the grimness and sheer violence that comes with the holiday shopping period), but I felt like we were witnessing the beginning of the retail zombie apocalypse in this story. He portrays the rampant, lustful, selfish consumerism so adeptly through the eyes of the main character, who’s name we don’t even get to know. And you end up rooting for him and all the sales assistants, hoping they can make it out unhurt after Black Friday. Having worked in retail myself while in University and in my first years after graduating University, I wonder if I would have left like Duo or stayed on like our protagonist …

So, Vina, you mentioned offline that the story “The Hospital Where” also resonated with you …

V: Yeah. So, in doing research for this episode, I had read about some of Adjei-Brenyah’s life experiences — where his family was one health bill away from getting their home foreclosed on; or where his older sister bought him his first laptop in college after he felt out of place when he saw all these other kids bringing their Macbooks to class; and where sometimes he couldn’t take any money out of an ATM because he didn’t even have $20 in his bank account; and then, where writing ultimately got him out of his retail job into a teaching position at his Alma Mater Syracuse.

Adjei-Brenyah says people need stories because they

… can be hope machines. They can stretch our ability to empathize. They can train our imaginations … I think people need stories because they’re pieces of life that might not otherwise be available.

So, when I read “The Hospital Where,” I did recognize it as a personal story, especially in terms of how transformative writing was for both Adjei-Brenyah and this unnamed narrator in the story. And as someone who left this career for the uncertainty of starting again as an older writer, I related to this story about the frustration and desperation and hope and freedom that are all simultaneously part of the writing process. And he describes so vividly:

What I could never tell my father was that I’d given myself to the Twelve-tongued God. It had happened many years before. We’d been in a house that the bank would soon want back. The nights were dark because the gas and electric company had decided enough was enough. I’d learned that many of the things I loved, the comforts that made me feel good about myself, could disappear very slowly and also suddenly. I’d learned to hate then. To hate others for having things, to hate myself for not. One day, like an angel, the Twelve-tongued God emerged from the midnight black around me, as mysterious and vital as my own breath.

“I can give you new eyes. Eyes that will work, that won’t cry. I can put your hurt to use,” Twelve-tongue said … “I can give you the power to be anywhere. To heal the world. To own time. To turn lies to truth. To make day into night and night into day” … “You will have the power to change everything, to make the life you want.”

And so, in this story, we see how powerful imagination, writing, and creating is for Adjei-Brenyah. In fact, the colophon at the beginning of the book is “Anything you imagine you possess,” which is from a Kendrick Lamar lyric.

T: Mmm, yeah. And I definitely feel that with all the different stories within this book. I mean, what an amazing collection of stories here. I’d love to talk about more of them, especially “The Lion and the Spider” and “Through the Flash,” but I really want to get to our next book. So, maybe our listeners can shoot us a note, either via email at theliftuppod@gmail.com or over Instagram @theliftuppod, and we can carry on this conversation there.

So, moving right along on from Friday Black to The City We Became — I was really looking forward to reading this book, especially as a member of Team Escapism! And, I’m going to start talking about this book with a little bit of an anecdote. As I was reading it, the song “Empire State of Mind” by Alicia Keys popped up on my Spotify, and I just got all of the New Yorker feels — that song stayed as a backdrop in my head while I read this book no matter where I was. As the first in what’s meant to be a trilogy, this book introduces us to the various boroughs of New York City as avatars. I loved how N.K. Jemisin gave personas to each of the boroughs and the cities. And she included London, with a shout out to Lewisham — thank you! As I read the embodiment of each borough as a person, I started to think, which one am I the most like? Am I Brooklyn? Am I Queens? Am I Manhattan? Am I a little bit of all three, given how I’ve lived between all of those three boroughs throughout my whole life in New York City? I don’t know!

V: Yeah, I love her creation of the avatars as well, especially as a way for readers who’ve never been to New York City maybe or understand how just culturally unique each borough is, and to get a sense of that. It’s so funny, I’ve lived in Manhattan since I immigrated here as a teenager, but I feel more like I crashed the party than I feel I actually belong in this borough (especially when you think about all the billionaires who live in this borough). And I mean, I sort of did. You know, I grew up in Mitchell Llama housing, which was this program for working and middle-class people that’s since been phased out. And then, for over two decades now, I’ve been among the lucky few, the 20 percent of people in New York City who live in rent-stabilized apartments.

And so, in terms of the avatar that I identified most with, it’s probably Bronca from the Bronx. As an indigenous Lenape, she consciously tries to practice what her ancestors taught her about relating to other people and the environment. And like her, it really upsets me when transient people or tourists see New York as just this place to work and play and don’t see that there are real communities of people who live here. I found myself nodding when she says:

People still tell stories of how terrible the Bronx is. At the same time, somewhere, some realtor is talking up how amazing it is, so that people with money will come and buy up everything. At the same time there are the folks who live here, for whom it’s neither terrible nor amazing; it just is.

And I also relate to her being an artist and curator who’s committed to promoting art by and within her community, even if it means not getting the respect of a Manhattan-centric art world and art funders. So, before we dive into what the book’s about, what was it like for you reading The City We Became in a city in the middle of a pandemic, Tamara?

T: A very, very welcome distraction. I mean, even though N.K. Jemisin incorporates some of the real issues that face New York City and most major cities for that matter — like the impact of gentrification, racial profiling, and stark inequality to name a few, and she portrays this as a virus that needs to be fought collectively — I found myself mostly focusing on the characters and their development … What they drew strength from, how they found or came to an understanding of their purpose, and then setting out to protect the city and the people they love from this infection. I also loved how she incorporated help from other cities and almost made it into a federation of cities that needed to band together and ensure the health of the current universe.

And there were so many points I silently cheered at in the book — a little “Yea!” or “You know it!” as I read along. When the main avatar had the first battle, all through that fight scene I could see myself getting my back up, ready to say, “Don’t mess with my city!” And you know us New Yorkers, we have a love-hate relationship with our city, but we won’t just let anybody come in and hurt it or talk down about it! So, I just have to read out this part of the novel in the beginning (and a warning for our listeners, it’s very explicit, so cover your kiddies’ ears):

We got this. Don’t sleep on the city that never sleeps, son, and don’t fucking bring your squamous eldritch bullshit here. I raise my arms and avenues leap … The beast of the deep shrieks and I laugh, giddy with postpartum endorphins. Bring it. And when it comes at me, I hip-check it with the BQE, backhand it with Inwood Hill Park, drop the South Bronx on it like an elbow … Oh, now you’re crying! Now you wanna run? Nah, son. You came to the wrong town. I curb stomp it with the full might of Queens and something inside the beast breaks and bleeds iridescence all over creation … Then I shower the Enemy with a one-two punch of Long Island radiation and Gowanus toxic waste, which burns it like acid. It screams again in pain and disgust, but Fuck you, you don’t belong here, this city is mine, get out! To drive the lesson home, I cut the bitch with LIRR traffic, long vicious honking lines; and to stretch out its pain, I salt these wounds with the memory of a bus ride to LaGuardia and back … 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 …

Sorry mom for all the cursing! But man, what a powerful introduction to New York City’s strength as an all embodying avatar! I mean, come on, think of all the New Yorkers that can relate to this powerful depiction of what it means to be New York City. And, I mean, how powerful is the city because of all the boroughs together, not just Manhattan alone? And you need them all on side to fight this creeping Enemy — an alliance that is threatened by a very crafty Enemy who preys on fear and prejudice, as we can see throughout the book.

V: Yeah, I really enjoyed the language and the attitude in this book. Maybe because I’m reading it in New York, I actually felt like it was a hyperreal version of what’s happening here now. There were details in the book that were so timely and relevant, it made me forget that, while it was published this year, Jemisin actually started writing the book a couple of years ago. For instance, the way Jemisin turns the gentrification and homogenization of New York into a virus, like you mentioned. And, you know, the city really emptied out at the height of the pandemic in May, just as we were being encouraged to fill out the census. And it became clear, based on which neighborhoods were and weren’t filling them out, that the wealthy gentrifiers had left the city and that many of them weren’t planning to come back. But, of course, the frontline workers, restaurant and food delivery workers, those of us who don’t have the means for a summer rental or second home, had no choice but to shelter in place as the Covid-19 rate kept rising.

Also, early in the book, there’s a scene in Inwood Park where a white woman infected by the “Enemy” virus calls the cops on Manhattan’s avatar, Manny, and his British Chinese roommate Bel, whom she accuses of “doing drugs or blowing each other in broad daylight” even though they’re clearly not doing anything other than hanging out.

It gave me chills because it reminded me of the incident that happened in Central Park back in May where Amy Cooper (who’s white) called the cops on Christian Cooper (no relation — he was a Black birder), claiming he was threatening her and her dog, when he clearly wasn’t. But, the fact that Jemisin wrote a very similar scene years ago just underscores how these incidents, which keep cropping up, are just symptoms of a larger social illness that won’t go away unless we eradicate it at the root.

T: True, and I also liked the way Manny handles that, where he says:

I mean, we’re not drug dealers. But if we were, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that you just stood there filming us. That just doesn’t sound safe, does it? But I think you filmed us because you didn’t think we were dealers. Because we were just ordinary people going about our own business, and it bothered you to see us comfortable and unafraid.

Which is the point of the Enemy, right? To continue to make people feel afraid and uncomfortable for existing in their own spaces and then to use and perpetuate fear in order to sow division or weaken the resolve of these characters.

V: I do think it’s interesting that in the scene where we meet the Staten Island avatar, Aislyn, she’s on the phone listening to her dad — who’s a cop and descendent of Irish immigrants — tell her how sick he is of immigrants, and how he just profiled and intimidated a man by pretending to call ICE on him. Jemisin zooms out and describes the borough of Staten Island:

Everything that happens everywhere else happens on Staten Island, too, but here people try not to see the indecencies, the domestic violence, the drug use. And then, having denied what’s right in front of their eyes, they tell themselves that at least they’re living in a good place full of good people. At least it’s not the city.

And then, this is juxtaposed with the scene where we meet Queens avatar Padmini for the first time, studying in her room worrying about finding a job so she could get an H-1B visa and not get deported by ICE. Again, Jemisin zooms out and describes Padmini’s neighborhood:

This is just one building amid thousands in Jackson Heights — but here, in this four-story walk-up, is a microcosm of Queens itself. People, cultures, moving in and forming communities and moving on, endlessly. In such a place, nurtured by the presence and care of its avatar, the borough’s power has permeated every board and cinder block of the building, making it stronger and safer even as the city as a whole totters, weakened, against its enemy’s onslaught.

I think Jemisin does a great job of trying to unpack why some people distrust those who are unlike them and distance themselves from others as they pursue only what’s in their own self-interest. It’s really about those with privilege who have an illogical fear of losing that privilege. And by showing us Padmini’s world, I think Jemisin is inviting us to imagine what the possibilities could be if we stopped acting selfishly—you know, if we allow more people to benefit from and contribute back to this country. As Jemisin puts it in an interview with the Paris Review:

We are capable of creating spaceships that go to other worlds. We are capable of mining those worlds for resources. We are capable of coming up with technology that benefits everybody on this planet. We just haven’t been doing that. We’ve been coming up with technology that benefits a few. What could we achieve if all six billion of us had a decent education and good food in our bellies? How much could we come up with? I think it would be amazing.

T: I really like that quote from her from Paris Review. And it’s a very interesting perspective. Going back to the avatars, I love the way Jemisin develops each avatar and gradually builds their sense of purpose. And I just want to run down some of my favorite sections of the book for each borough, and I start with this quote from Brooklyn, “So lesson one of New York: what people think about us isn’t what we really are …”

So, aside from the avatar who is the full embodiment of the city that we meet in the beginning (this person’s all the boroughs included), we get introduced to Manny as Manhattan first as he stumbles his way through trying to figure out what’s actually happening to him, and I end up loving his sheer cockiness, but also, there’s this point when he realizes he is Manhattan as everything pulls him towards his first foray with the enemy minutes after he arrives in New York City:

And as Manny climbs off the cab’s hood and settles back onto the ground, once again he feels something waft through him, from the soles of his shoes to the roots of his hair … That energy is the city, he understands somehow, and it is part of him, filling him up and driving out anything unnecessary to make room for itself. That’s why his name is gone … “I am Manhattan,” he murmurs softly. And the city replies, without words, right into his heart: Welcome to New York.

I mean, what an introduction for someone who’s just moving to New York City and getting ready to call it home! It reminded me of how many people who are New Yorkers are people who chose New York to be their home and hold it in their heart, similar to Jemisin who, in her acknowledgements, notes that her formative years were in Alabama, but she spent summers in Brooklyn and has lived in New York City full time since 2007. And I also appreciate that Manny acknowledges that being Manhattan comes with the sins of its history. He goes:

I am Manhattan, he thinks again, this time in a slow upwelling of despair. Every murderer. Every slave broker. Every slumlord who shut off the heat and froze children to death. Every stockbroker who got rich off war and suffering. It’s only the truth. He doesn’t have to like it, though.

And then, if I move on to Brooklyn, my favourite parts of her development are when she meets Manny, and she’s about to agree to teach him what it’s like to be a New Yorker; as well as when she’s fighting off the Enemy who’s trying to invade her home in Brooklyn, and it takes everything in her to stave them off. And I’m going to blend some of these passages. So, it starts with:

And here in this other realm she looms over him, vast and sprawling, widely patchwork and dense. Not just older but bigger. Stronger in many ways; her arms and core are thick with muscled neighborhoods that each have their own rhythms and reputations. Williamsburg, Hasidim enclave and artist have turned hipster ground zero. Bed Stuy (do or die). Crown Heights, where now the only riots are over seats at brunch. Her jaw is tight with the stubborn ferocity of Brighton Beach’s old mobsters and the Rockaways’ working class holdouts against the brutal inevitability of rising seas. But there are spires at Brooklyn’s heart, too — perhaps not as grand as his own, and maybe some of hers are actually the airy, fanciful amusement-park towers of Coney Island — but all are just as shining, just as sharp. She is Brooklyn, and she is mighty, and in this instant he cannot help but love her, stranger or not. Then she is just a middle-aged woman again, with a shining, sharp grin.

And then further in the fight when she’s fighting off the monsters:

What Brooklyn is, though, defies the thing’s attempts. She’s one woman-but in this instant is is also two and a half million people, fifty trillion moving parts, the biggest and baddest borough of the greatest city in the world. And the stuff that binds her — the will and allegiance and collective strength that screams, We are Brooklyn — is far more powerful than the force that holds the X-spiders together.

I absolutely love this vivid portrayal of Brooklyn’s strength, and maybe I’m slightly biased for being born there. But if we move to Queens, as you talked about. Padmi — she was the sweetest for me and I think the most naive avatar, with her love of math and the weight of her family’s hopes and dreams on her, such that this particular paragraph stood out for me for Queens in her early development. She goes:

She sighs.“I hate this city. That’s the irony of this whole affair. Me, part of New York? That’s bullshit. Such bullshit. But I’ve lived here for like a third of my life, and my family’s hopes are all tied up in me being successful here, so … I can’t leave it either.” And that, Manny understands, is why she has become Queens.

And then if we go to The Bronx … The Bronx had reminded me of so many friends from the Bronx, and I loved how Jemisin left The Bronx so conflicted until she knew she had no other choice than to join the other avatars. But before she does, there’s a passage that stood out for me for Bronca at the beginning of her transformation into the Bronx. And I know you mentioned her Lenape heritage, and I think all of that kind of comes into this particular paragraph where she says:

This is a natural thing. She’s the eldest of the group, after all, and the city has decided that she is the one best prepared to bear the burden of knowledge … And yet. Even though she knows what must be done — they must find and protect each other and learn to fight together, it’s crazy but it’s true — she sets her jaw. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t need it. She has responsibilities. A grandchild to nurture and spoil! She’s been fighting all her life, goddamn it. Has to work five extra years just to be able to afford a semblance of retirement, and she’s tired. Does she still have it in her to fight an interdimensional war? … “The other boroughs will just have to look out for themselves,” Bronca mutters … The Bronx has always been on its own; let them learn what that felt like.

And then very, very last, Jersey City. I mean, I loved when Veneza realizes she is becoming an avatar of Jersey City to help the other boroughs fight the Enemy:

She is a dirty, tired little thing — struggling in the shadow of greatness, but proud of what she has. Potential is what she’s got, in spades, and she stretches out stubby little piers and puffs a sunken chest of long vanished industry and tosses her crown of new, gaudy skyscrapers as if to say, Come at me, I don’t care how big you are, I’m just as badass as you …

And then when Paulo realizes what’s happening, he says:

Living cities aren’t defined by politics … Not by city limits or county lines. They’re made of whatever the people who live in and around them believe.

And then, lastly, Bronca confirms it for Veneza by saying:

Every single person I’ve ever met from Jersey City says they’re from New York … not to New Yorkers, because we’re assholes about it, but to everybody else. And the whole world accepts that. Right? Because to most people with sense, a city that’s in spitting distance of Manhattan, closer even than Staten Island, might as well be New York. Right?

And, we’re not forgetting Staten Island here, but I don’t want to give away too much, especially since it saddened me with what happened with Staten Island’s avatar, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that story develops in the next two installments. I think the way Jemisin left it gives us quite a lot to look forward to and potentially talk about in a later episode!

V: Yeah. In her acknowledgements, she says this book is an homage to New York City and that she hopes she gets it right. N.K. Jemisin, if you’re listening, you absolutely got the soul of New York City right!

T: Indeed!

V: And she also says something I think many New Yorkers feel: “I have hated this city. I have loved this city. I will fight for this city until it won’t have me anymore.”

T: Yeah, so true. I also loved how some of the people who aren’t avatars can see the Enemy, and they can therefore help the avatars fight the Enemy, whilst others are incredibly ignorant of the Enemy and therefore they’re easily influenced by it. And I think it’s just an amazing depiction of current society.

So, let’s talk a little bit about the Enemy. And no one knows how to pronounce the Enemy’s name (R’lyeh). I tried looking it up, as the names in that story are left very ambiguous in terms of pronunciation. But I’m gonna go with the pronunciation of “Reh-lay.” Such a crafty character, trying to pick off each avatar one by one by exploiting weaknesses or wielding the system to do her bidding in order to threaten or undercut each avatar’s resolve, or undermine their faith in each other and New York City. The creation of the “Better New York Foundation” to push the Enemy’s agenda sounds all too familiar in real application.

Additionally, I found it really interesting how N.K. Jemisin incorporates elements of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” as the basis for the Enemy. Given Lovecraft’s very racist views and depiction of people of color in his sci-fi stories, I wonder if this was used as an ironic reference? I think we could spend a whole episode walking through this as a theme, but I’m also very curious as to what our listeners think. So, folks out there, share with us, and maybe we might do a special episode if there’s enough interest!

V: So, I’ve never read H.P. Lovecraft and didn’t realize the octopus-like Enemy in The City We Became was based on a Lovecraft character until I had to look up the phrase “squamous eldritch.” Of course, Lovecraft does come up more explicitly in the Staten Island chapter, where R’lyeh asks Aislyn, who works at a library, if she’s ever read him. It makes sense that he’d be a kind of prophet for the Enemy, because he thought cities, where white people were forced to coexist with Jewish, Black, and Asian people were the worst, most dangerous places. Sadly, many people in this country still believe this. I see posts on social media all the time by people who don’t live in New York talking about all the looting, rioting, and murders supposedly happening here. I mean, I live here, and I can tell you that when I’ve gone to protests, what I see is actually a community coming together to fight injustice and keep each other safe.

And it was just so satisfying that what defeats this formidable Lovecraft character R’lyeh and her squad of alt-right hipsters with man-buns is the very thing Lovecraft feared the most — people of different races and from different countries banding together and harnessing their collective strength.

And I do think, as we see more and more talented and bestselling Black sci-fi and fantasy authors emerge, and with public reception for shows like Lovecraft Country, it’s going to be a lot harder to keep Lovecraft on a pedestal and look the other way regarding his anti-Semitism, his racism, and xenophobia — especially since, as you mentioned, it’s actually part of and inseparable from his work. But you’re right, Tamara, this could be a topic for an entirely separate episode!

So once again, great chat about two amazing books for this sci-fi themed episode — The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin and Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Thanks, again, to Camille for the N.K. Jemisin recommendation! If you have any other thoughts on sci-fi themed books or collections that you want to share with us, please interact with us through our Instagram page @theliftuppod.

T: And to close out, we do want to give you a heads up on what we’re reading for our final episode of the season. For November, our final episode of the season, we’ll be reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. And to keep you going throughout the holiday season, we’ll be sharing with you our holiday book list, so keep an eye out for our reading recommendations on our blog, medium.com/the-lift-up-podcast, or on our Instagram page @theliftuppod. Feel free to send us questions or suggestions through our Instagram page, again @theliftuppod, and thanks so much again for listening to us here at The Lift Up Podcast.

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