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| Zadie Smith David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
A Speech: On Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues, and lovers of literature,
It is both a pleasure and an honor to stand before you today and speak about a novel that, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, reshaped the way readers across the globe thought about multicultural Britain, family legacies, and the complicated beauty of human connection.
I am speaking, of course, of Zadie Smith’s remarkable debut novel, White Teeth.
Now, my purpose today is not merely to recount the story to you, as one might summarize a plot on the back of a book cover. Instead, I wish to narrate the journey of this novel with you, to help you hear its characters’ voices, to glimpse the tangled web of histories it presents, and to feel, as I do, why it is a book that is not simply read but lived through.
[Part One: The Essence of the Story]
At its core, White Teeth is a story about two men and their families — but like any great work of literature, this deceptively simple premise unfolds into a kaleidoscope of culture, identity, history, and fate.
We begin with Archie Jones, a rather unremarkable man in many ways, an Englishman of modest ambition, who has recently attempted to end his own life in the most unceremonious of ways: inside his car, in a London suburb. But, in a manner that sets the tone for the entire book, chance, luck, and absurdity intervene. He survives. And surviving, he finds himself entangled once again with his old war-time friend, Samad Iqbal.
Samad is Bangladeshi by origin, a man of pride and contradictions. During the Second World War, he and Archie served together, and it is from that bond, that improbable cross-cultural friendship, that much of the novel’s events unfurl.
Archie, soon after his failed attempt at self-destruction, stumbles into a marriage with Clara Bowden — a Jamaican woman, much younger than him, who herself carries the weight of her own family’s religious and cultural histories. Clara’s mother, Hortense, is a devout Jehovah’s Witness who views her daughter’s choices with both sorrow and judgment. But Clara, vibrant and searching, steps into her new life with Archie nonetheless.
From this union comes Irie — their daughter, whose very existence embodies the complexity of contemporary Britain: she is Black, she is White, she is Jamaican, she is English, she is herself, yet pulled in countless directions by the demands of history, ancestry, and society.
Samad, meanwhile, marries Alsana, another immigrant from Bangladesh. Their marriage is not without friction, but it endures, as marriages often do, through compromise, quarrels, and care. They, too, bring forth children: twin boys, Magid and Millat. And here begins one of the central dramas of the novel — for although twins, they grow to embody opposing poles of identity, aspiration, and belonging.
Magid, shipped back to Bangladesh under his father’s insistence, grows into a secular, rational-minded thinker — a believer in science, progress, and modernity. Millat, left behind in London, becomes swept up in the tides of radicalism, in his case religious fundamentalism. The twins, split geographically and ideologically, reflect the fractures not only of one family but of whole cultures, nations, and religions in flux.
And surrounding them, as the story sprawls across decades, are questions: How do individuals inherit history? How do the ghosts of colonization, migration, and faith shape children born into new worlds? And how, amidst all this, does love — flawed, yearning, sometimes comic — manage to survive?
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| Zadie Smith David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
[Part Two: The Themes that Make the Novel Special]
Ladies and gentlemen, why is White Teeth special? Why, out of the vast sea of novels one could read, should this one remain on your list?
First, because it is a story of multiplicity. It is not one voice, but many. It is not one history, but an intertwining of histories. Zadie Smith does not present us with a singular version of Britain.
Instead, she insists we listen to the cacophony: Jamaican voices, Bangladeshi voices, English voices, children of mixed heritage grappling with their identities, and even the voices of past generations who fought wars and made choices that ripple into the present.
Second, because it is a comic novel that deals with tragic material. Smith manages, with astonishing skill, to make us laugh even as we are confronted with questions of racism, assimilation, generational trauma, and the pull of extremism. Comedy, here, is not frivolous — it is a survival strategy, a way of making sense of contradictions that would otherwise overwhelm.
Third, because White Teeth is about legacy. Every parent in the book wants something different for their children. Samad longs for his sons to hold onto tradition, to honor faith, to resist what he sees as the moral corrosion of the West.
Archie, though less forceful, wants peace, normalcy, the unremarkable happiness that eluded him in his earlier life. Clara wants Irie to flourish but is haunted by her own mother’s religious strictures. And Hortense, the grandmother, holds to her apocalyptic visions, convinced she knows the destiny of her kin. Each generation hands down both gifts and burdens.
Fourth, because it is a novel of London. Rarely has a city been so vividly painted in literature. The streets, the smells, the shifting populations, the mingling of accents, the constant negotiations of belonging — all of it breathes through these pages. For those who know London, it is recognizable; for those who don’t, it becomes palpable.
Finally, it is special because Zadie Smith wrote it at the age of just twenty-four. With a debut novel, she captured the complexity of late-twentieth-century life with a maturity that still astonishes readers today.
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| Zadie Smith David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
[Part Three: The Characters as Mirrors]
Allow me now to pause on a few characters, for they are what make White Teeth more than a social commentary; they make it a living, breathing narrative.
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Archie Jones — He is, in many ways, ordinary. But therein lies his charm. Archie teaches us that the ordinary life is worthy of literature. He is indecisive, passive, sometimes baffled by the world, yet he carries within him an openness that allows relationships to grow where otherwise they might falter.
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Samad Iqbal — A man constantly at war with himself. He wants to be honorable, but compromises. He wants to uphold tradition, but sins. He wants his children to embody purity, yet his decisions fracture his family. He is deeply human in his contradictions, reminding us that identity is never simple.
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Irie Jones — Perhaps the most beloved figure in the novel, Irie embodies the struggle of the second generation. She wants straight hair, she wants to be beautiful, she wants to fit in. But as she grows, she discovers her voice, her agency, her ability to define herself beyond the projections of others. She is a beacon of hope, a reminder that while parents pass on their struggles, children can carve out new paths.
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Magid and Millat — The twins, so alike in birth yet so different in fate. Their divergence is both symbolic and painfully real: it reflects the pulls on children of diaspora communities, the choice — or sometimes lack of choice — between assimilation and resistance, between modernity and tradition, between rationalism and faith.
And beyond them all, a web of secondary characters, each contributing to the chorus: from Marcus Chalfen, the scientist whose project “FutureMouse” sparks climactic conflict, to Alsana’s sharp-tongued pragmatism, to the religious groups and radicals who pull the young in opposing directions.
[Part Four: The Structure and Style]
White Teeth is not linear; it is layered. Zadie Smith takes us back in time — to World War II, to colonial histories, to family origins — and then forward again, to the late 1990s, where science, religion, and politics clash. The novel’s structure mirrors its themes: fractured, interconnected, never simple.
The style is witty, expansive, generous. Smith does not shy away from digression. She allows the story to spill into tangents, to mimic the way life itself is messy, full of interruptions. Her prose dances — sharp when it must be, tender when it wishes, satirical when it sees folly.
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| Zadie Smith David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
[Part Five: Why We Read It Today]
Now, you might ask, why read White Teeth today, a quarter of a century after its publication?
Because the questions it raises remain urgent. We still grapple with multiculturalism, with questions of belonging, with generational divides, with extremism, with science and faith, with how the past haunts the present.
Because it reminds us, through humor and humanity, that beneath all differences, people struggle with the same longings: to love, to belong, to leave something behind for their children.
Because in an age where divisions often seem insurmountable, White Teeth offers a vision of coexistence — messy, imperfect, conflict-ridden, but coexistence nonetheless.
And because it is, simply put, a joy to read.
[Conclusion]
Ladies and gentlemen, I have taken you through the broad strokes of White Teeth — its story, its themes, its characters, its style, and its enduring significance. But to truly know this novel is to encounter its pages yourself. No speech, however thorough, can replicate the experience of laughing at Samad’s contradictions, aching with Irie’s confusions, or marveling at the unlikely ways fate ties lives together.
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| Zadie Smith David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is special because it is alive. It is a mirror to society, a testament to resilience, and a celebration of the ordinary and extraordinary mingling in human lives. It tells us that history is never behind us; it lives in us, shaping us, even as we shape the future.
So I invite you, not only as readers but as fellow human beings, to take up this novel — or to return to it — and to listen to the chorus of voices it contains. In doing so, you may well hear echoes of your own life, your own family, your own struggles with identity and belonging.
And that, I believe, is the mark of great literature: it becomes not just a story about others but a story about ourselves.
Thank you.
