The City We Became

The City We Became is an urban fantasy novel by the American writer N. K. Jemisin, published in 2020. It grew out of her short story The City Born Great, it is the first book of the Great Cities duology, and it was her first novel after completing the Broken Earth series.

The book belongs to a world in which great cities become sentient by producing human avatars. New York's first avatar is a homeless Black graffiti artist who lives on rooftops; he is told what he is by Sao Paulo, the avatar of that city, chased through the streets by shape-shifting creatures, and then lost to a coma, which leaves the city open to whatever was hunting him.

Five new avatars come forward to take his place, one for each borough. A Black graduate student new to the city steps off a train with no memory of who he is, takes the name Manny and finds that he speaks for Manhattan; a Lenape gallery director in the Bronx notices graffiti that seems to be calling to her; a politician in Brooklyn can hear her borough singing. They have to find one another and work out what the enemy is before the city is taken from them.