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White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, 2000
“I’m as liberal as
the next person,...but why do they always have to be laughing and making
a song-and-dance about everything? I cannot believe homosexuality is
that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.”
Zadie Smith was only 25
when she published White Teeth, her first novel. In it, the young author
uses her absolutely brilliant sense of humor to attack every stereotype
and expectation we hold for ourselves and others. This is a book that
should be required reading to make some sense out of life. It’s been a
long time since I’ve enjoyed such a smart, funny story. You name
it—class, culture, ethnicity, age, gender, politics, marriage,
homosexuality, religion—nothing is left untouched by Smith’s dry
wit. Her humor is irreverently tongue-in-cheek, and her keen sense of
the odd dynamics of the British society in which she was raised provides
amble opportunity for sarcasm. White Teeth is a book about the history
of the possibilities that emerge from the interaction of all the
elements of our lives. And, as the book jacket puts it, the “tricky
way the past has of coming back and biting you in the ankle.” When you
examine her cast of characters, it’s not hard to see fate tripping
down the story path to deliver a swift kick.
Archie and Samad
Archibald Jones, a working-class professional paper folder, and Samad
Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim immigrant waiter, met during a brief (although
actually a bit extended, since the British military forgot to tell the
two stranded soldiers the war was over) and largely uneventful stint
during WWII. Although separated for the thirty years since the war,
chance and circumstance help them renew their friendship. You see, by
the time the 1970s roll around, life is not what Archie bargained for.
Smith opens White Teeth with Archie’s attempted suicide, a desperate
measure unceremoniously thwarted by pigeon shit—in a roundabout way.
Once life claims Archie, a man whose only strong opinion seems to be on
the role of fate as a determining factor for action (heads or tails,
Samad?), for the land of the living, Archie resolves to try his hand at
life again. After all, he and Samad can always recall the wisdom and
experience they gained from their one misfit-teamed, botched mission at
the end of the war for their new families, who of course promptly thrust
them out the door and down the street to O’Connell’s Poolroom. The
Irish poolroom, run by a Middle Eastern family as a café, is a hideout
for life’s outsiders. It takes decades to become a regular, but Archie
and Samad are dedicated.
Clara and Alsana
When the two men marry young brides, they find themselves way out of
their league. Clara, a nineteen-year-old toothless Jamaican girl hiding
from her devout Jehovah’s Witness mother who recently recruited her
Irish boyfriend, meets Archie at the remains of a New Year’s party and
sees her chance to escape. She underestimates Archie ordinariness,
however, and finds herself sucked into an alternative, but just as
boring, average British society. Clara slowly finds solidarity in Alsana,
Samad’s young—and equally deceived bride—who is herself an odd mix
of beliefs. Not exactly a religious person, Alsana divides humanity into
two camps, those who can “take life lightly” and those who cannot.
She is infatuated with British society because of its superficial calm,
unlike the daily doom that clouds the lives of her homeland’s people.
Her particular brand of faith is tested time and again by Samad, who,
despite his very British behavior, holds a nostalgic sense of guilty
respect for his Muslim background.
Irie, Magid, and
Millat: The next generation
Irie, daughter of Clara and Archie, and the twin boys of Alsana and
Samad, are the same age. Each child has his or her own unique outlook on
life. Irie, with her mixed coloring, hair, and large form, finds herself
an outcast in school. Her only connection to popularity is her childhood
friend, Millat, a pot-smoking wannabe gangster-turned-religious zealot
(it’s the uniform that gets him). Magid, on the other hand, is sent
away by Samad to live with Samad’s family in Begal (That is good for
several chapters worth of laughs in itself). The three struggle with
their identities in a culture brimming with contradictions. They find a
home, however temporary, in the Chalfen household.
The Chalfens,
Futuremouse, and Feminism
Through a chance encounter with a classmate, Irie and Millat are thrown
into the very bizarre world of Chalfenism. More than a family name,
Chalfen is a verb, adjective, and philosophy of life that represents all
of objective British liberal upper-middle class society. Joyce, the
family matriarch, immediately embraces the two ‘‘lost souls’ on
her doorstep and takes it upon herself to provide a better life for
them. Spouting her own brand of feminism, Joyce is the perfect satire of
a pseudo-intellectual liberal housewife. Her world rarely extends past
her own Chalfenist doorstep. Her husband, Marcus, is just as odd. A
strange mix of politics and practices, the Jewish scientist spends much
of his time developing Futuremouse, an amazing genetically-programmed
creature. When the Chalfens, Iqbals, and Joneses finally cross paths,
the finish is nothing short of spectacular.
Of course, my favorite
character is Neena, Alsana’s niece. She’s not overly prominent in
the story, but she provides a running twist to all heterosexual mishaps.
Her full name, of course, is (unofficially) Niece-of-Shame. “Neena was
used to this…It used to come in longer sentences, e.g., you have
brought nothing but shame...or My niece, the shameful...But now because
Alsana no longer had the time or energy to summon up the necessary shock
each time, it had become abridged to Niece-of-Shame, an all-purpose tag
that summed up the general feeling.” This does not prevent Neena and
her girlfriend from becoming active and frequent visitors in the Jones-Iqbal
families’ homes, however, and it is reassuring to note that they are
probably the least screwed up characters in the book.
White Teeth is a epic
of sorts, where, like reality, the past is never quite far enough
behind. Enjoy!
Rebecca
James lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she is completing (May 10,
2003!) her certification to teach secondary English. She is beginning
her Master’s in Education this summer.
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