Writing the City
Dispatch from Writing with the Seasons - July 2024
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This summer, I’ve been reading city literature. I’ve wandered the vivid, chaotic streets of Naples with Elena Ferrante in her novel ‘The Lying Life of Adults,’ too. Teenage Giovanna sees the city divided into separate parts:
We lived in the highest part of Naples, and to go anywhere we had inevitably to descend… The space where my father’s relatives lived was undefined, nameless. I knew only one thing for certain: to visit them you had to go down, and down, and keep going down, into the depths of the depths of Naples, and the journey was so long it seemed to me that we and my father’s relatives lived in two different cities.
The shape of the city mirrors the coming-of-age story: as Giovanna moves between these two cities, she discovers, and come to terms with, different versions of herself.
I’ve tasted dumplings, noodles and street food with Nina Mingya Powles in ‘Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai.’ Meal by meal, season by season, she writes of her deepening relationship with the city through food:
It is June. I am in Shanghai and I am not tired. June in Shanghai is for cold bubble tea, for kissing, for three-yuan ice creams and misty rain mixing with sweat on skin.
Delicious! A city gives us so much—people, places, moments, sounds, food—which makes it tough to put into words. This book reminded me we can find our own personal lens to write of it: in this case, food.
Writing prompt: Write about food and cities. You could make a list of great (or terrible) meals you’ve eaten (or cooked) in different places. Or an interesting restaurant or best ice cream you once discovered in a new city. Can you describe the setting? Were you alone or with others? What time of year was it? How did the location affect your experience?
I’ve also been in New York. Vivian Gornick uses the streets of Manhattan as both setting and theme. The city is a stage for experiences and for the author to tell stories from her life and relationships with friends, lovers, her mother and strangers, too:
A hilarious exchange had taken place between me and a pizza deliveryman, and sentences from it now started repeating themselves in my head as I walked on, making me laugh each time anew, and each time with yet deeper satisfaction. Energy—coarse and rich—began to swell inside the cavity of my chest. A surprising tenderness pressed against my heart and with unexpected sharpness I became alert not to the meaning but to the astonishment of human existence. It was there on the street, I realised, that I was filling my skin, occupying the present.
Here the location shapes the way people relate to each other and see themselves. Such an evocative sense of place anchors and illuminates Gornick’s writing.
What are your favourite city reads? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time,
Gemma x
Explore these books and my other favourite city reads on Bookshop! Writing with the Seasons is brought to you by Write & Shine. Summer artwork by Janeen Constantino.