Colson Whitehead “City Limits” : Summary

Colson Whitehead’s City Limits is a non-fictional piece where he exposes and re-creates New York City. As a long time New York City resident, Whitehead describes how this city he lived in back in the old days has changed drastically and isn’t “his city” anymore. He tells what it was like to live there when he was young compared to what he see now. New York City was modernized but Whitehead appreciates the small things about the city like “When the single frigid drop fell from the air conditioner twelve stories up and zapped you.” He explains how textbooks in school and even TV documentaries about New York are lies, because you didn’t witness it. Or they aren’t lies, just the stretched truth missing some facts. Things have value to some people but will be easily forgotten and replaced by other because that is what time does. However, those things are appreciated even though all they become is a memory. We each have our own perspective of the city, depending on how and where we lived there. Different things happened at different time in the same city therefore the city has history. The very sidewalk a person walked on may have changed decades later and the same people that walked upon it every day don’t anymore because they are replaced with new people.