Shadowshaper

The Tower is the nickname for a building overlooking Manny’s junkyard, “a five-story concrete monstrosity on a block otherwise full of brownstones” (2). The community assumes the Tower was intended to be a new complex or apartment building that has since been left “abandoned and unfinished” by the developers (2). As such, the Tower becomes a symbol of gentrification, the encroachment of change in the neighborhood intended to drive out the community currently living there in the name of progress. Later in the novel, Sierra learns Wick has been hiding out in the building, using it to watch her and the other shadowshapers and infiltrate their community. As a white man who has tried to steal shadowshaping powers from a community predominantly filled with people of color, Wick in himself represents cultural appropriation. His choice to hide out in the Tower contributes to the idea of the Tower as a symbol of gentrification.

Manny commissions Sierra to paint a mural on the side of the Tower, and she chooses to paint a huge dragon. Unaware of her shadowshaping powers when she begins the mural, Sierra nonetheless decides to make the creature “fierce” and watches eagerly as it “come[s] to life a fraction more with each new detail” (2).