White Teeth

Debut novel by British writer Zadie Smith, published in 2000 (Smith was 25 upon its release).

White Teeth, set in contemporary London, deals with issues of race, ethnicity, culture, immigration, multiculturalism and prejudice. It focuses primarily on the parents and children of the culturally and ethnically diverse Jones, Iqbal, and Chalfen families. The main story covers the years 1975 to 2000.

Summary

The novel is set in Willesden, North London. On New Year’s Day 1975, 47-year-old Archie (Alfred Archibald Jones) attempts to commit suicide by gassing himself in his car after his wife has left him. By chance he is saved by Mo Hussein-Ishmael, a butcher, who asks him to move out of his illegal parking spot. Archie is happy and enthusiastic about the second chance given to him and discovers a new zest for life. At a party he meets Clara Bowden, a Jamaican woman who is missing her upper teeth. Although Clara is half his age (she is 19), the two fall in love and get married six weeks after their first meeting.

In a flashback we learn about Clara’s youth as a Jehovah’s Witness. Clara's mother, Hortense Bowden, is a staunch Jehovah's Witness born during the Jamaican earthquake of 1907. Clara broke with her religion when she fell in love with Ryan Topps who later became a Jehova’s Witness himself and tried to win Clara back to the sect. The two were involved in an accident with Ryan’s scooter in which Clara lost her upper teeth.

Archie’s unlikely best friend is Samad Iqbal with whom he served in World War II. Samad was born in Bangladesh and migrated to Britain with his young wife Alsana, who was promised to him before her birth. Samad is a devout Muslim, working at an Indian restaurant, while Alsana sews clothing for an S&M shop. Clara Jones becomes pregnant with a daughter, Irie, and Alsana gives birth to twin boys, Magid and Millat. The two women become friends and realise how little they know about their older husbands.

In another flashback the novels tells the story of Archie’s and Samad’s meeting during World War II, when they became friends after all their comrades had been killed. The two men captured Dr. Marc-Pierre Perret, a scientist and Nazi conspirator whom they decided to kill to become heroes. Archie walked away with Dr. Perret and Samad heard a shot, assuming that Dr. Perret had been killed. When Archie returned, he had a bullet in his thigh.

In the present, three children Irie, Magid and Millat go to the same elementary school. Samad is over-involved in his children's education and at a meeting falls for their music teacher. He is torn between his feelings and his religion. Samad begins an affair but is caught in the act by his twin sons. He decides that in order to make sure that his sons grow into good, traditional Muslim men they have to be raised in Bangladesh. Due to financial reasons he can only choose one son and decides to kidnap Magid and sends him away to be raised with his family in Bangladesh. As a punishment Alsana refuses to give him definitive answers to even the simplest questions. After Magid is sent to Bangladesh, the lives of the two boys follow very different paths: Millat becomes a trouble-making, pot-smoking rebel with many affairs. To his father's discontent, Magid becomes a suit-wearing, secular, English intellectual.

In 1990 Irie, who is in love with Millat, has her hair straightened in order to attract him, but accidentally all her hair is burned off. She tries to warn Millat about a new Raid Committee against Marijuana but is dismissed by him. She walks away with a joint and meets the nerd Joshua Chalfen. The three are caught and as a punishment are forced to study together twice a week at the Chalfen’s, a Jewish-Catholic family. Joyce Chalfen, Joshua’s mother, is an English horticulturalist and writer, her husband Marcus a genetic engineer who works on a project called FutureMouse in which he has altered a mouse’s genes so that it develops cancer at certain times in its life. Especially Irie is fascinated by their middle-class intellect, comfort and happiness. Alsana and Clara are worried that the children spend too much time with the Chalfen family but are happy that their grades improve. Joyce offends Clara when she assumes that Irie’s intellect cannot come from her parents. Magid and Marcus Chalfen become friends and send each other letters of admiration. Later, Millat turns away from his Western promiscuous lifestyle and becomes a member of the Islamic fundamentalist group KEVIN (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation). Irie reads one of Marcus’s letters to Magid and finds out that he thinks the only science she is suited for is dentistry. She decides to become a dentist. When she talks to Clara about her decision, she knocks over a glass containing Clara’s false teeth. The teeth bite down on her foot, and for the first time she realizes that her mother's upper teeth are fake. Irie flees to her grandmother’s where she learns about her heritage and is fascinated by her family's past. Joshua Chalfen revolts against his father by joining the animal rights group FATE (Fighting Animal Torture and Exploitation).

For the first time since his childhood, Magid returns to London. His twin brother refuses to see him because he supports FutureMouse which Millat and KEVIN are protesting against. That is why Magid stays with the Chalfen family. Irie wants to bring the twins together. When she goes to talk to Millat the two have sex on his prayer mat which the devout Muslim regrets afterwards. Irie is furious and goes to Magid and has sex with him, too. After that the twins meet again but discover that their differences cannot be reconciled.

The novel concludes with the FutureMouse conference on New Year’s Eve, 1992. Millat and KEVIN have planned a protest, just like Joshua with FATE and Clara’s mother with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Magid on the other hand supports his mentor Marcus. Irie is pregnant but even a paternity test could not tell who the father is since Magid and Millat have identical genes.

The conference takes place at the Perret Institute. Samad discovers that the founder of the institute is Dr. Perret, the Nazi he captured in World War II and that the basis of his friendship with Archie is a lie. He is enraged that Archie did not kill him. Millat tries to shoot Dr. Perret, but instead shoots Archie in the thigh. As he falls, he knocks over the mouse’s cage and it escapes.

At the end of the novel, the narrator tells us that Magid and Millat have to serve community service for Millat’s crime because witnesses identified both men as offenders. Joshua and Irie become a couple and go to Jamaica in 2000 to live with Clara’s mother. On New Year's Eve 1999, Archie and Samad take Clara and Alsana to their favourite pub O'Connell's, which has finally opened its doors to women.

Awards

White Teeth received several awards including the Guardian First Book Award, Whitbread First Novel Award, and Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book). It also won two EMMAs (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards) for Best Book/Novel and Best Female Media Newcomer, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Orange Prize for Fiction, and Author's Club First Novel Award.

Television Adaption

White Teeth was so successful that it was turned into a television series in 2002. Smith makes a cameo appearance in the film.

Sources

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. London: Hamilton, 2000.

Tew, Philip. Zadie Smith. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Walter, Tracey L. Ed. Zadie Smith. Critical Essays. Ed. Tracey L.Walter. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

Excerpt from White Teeth: http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0700/smith/excerpt.html