LaValle Reflection

 Elizabeth Thompson

Dr. Ellis

EN 376

6 November 2023

Identity and Mission

            LaValle characterizes Grimace’s mission as a spiritual one that is suited to his identity. Near the end of the book Kim says, “Each of us gets the job that suits us. You have been used to hearing the voices others can’t hear… That’s why you’re the Signalman” (37). She then says she is the Pilot because traveling between Earth and the Astral City requires “Someone used to navigating between a world where they’re understood and a world where they’re misjudged” (37). While Kim is talking about the displacement of her people from Africa across the world via colonization and living as a sort of misjudged alien in those places, she could also be alluding to her gender identity. When Grimace asks her what she thinks about church, Kim says, “Half my good memories happened in my church. A few of the bad ones too. But it’s like first love, it always has a place in your heart” (24). Later, she jokes with Grimace, “You know Allah and Jesus might not like a girl like me” to which Grimace responds, “You mean because you’re a man” (26). As a transgender woman, Kim has navigated spaces of acceptance and judgement. Although not much is known about her childhood, she does describe a complicated relationship with the church as a place where she has experienced both love and pain, understanding and judgement. Similarly, generations of her displaced people have grown up and called New York their home while being misjudged in their environment like Grimace. Even so, Kim’s experience has equipped her to be the Pilot as she navigates between physical and nonphysical worlds. Near the end she tells Grimace, “My job now wouldn’t be possible if you hadn’t reduced the background noise, the spiritual interference” (37). Perhaps the spiritual interference has something to do with Kim’s bad memories of the church and misjudgment in her environment that has prevented her from connecting with the Pathfinders.