Meet the Cast
Alfred Archibald Jones
Mr. I'm-So-BoringFor a character who is the subject of the very beginning and the very end of this novel—not to mention lots and lots of the middle too—Archie doesn't seem to have much going fo...
Samad Miah Iqbal
Coulda' Been A ContenderSamad is loud, dark-skinned, fiery-tempered, self-contradictory, Bangladeshi, insecure… and a whole host of other things that his best bud, Archie the Englishman, isn't. T...
Clara Bowden Jones
Damsel in DistressOver the course of White Teeth, Clara goes from awkward, toothless Jehovah's Witness to Archie's very own moviestar. Wanna know how she gets from A to B? Tune in to our next parag...
Irie Jones
Big Girls Don't Cry—Um, Fit In Irie's a big girl. Her looks don't exactly live up to contemporary Western standards of beauty. So, unfortunately, she spends a lot of energy obsessing over her ap...
Millat Iqbal
Millat, the younger Iqbal twin, is the quintessential bad boy. He smokes, drinks, has sex with lots of women, gets kicked out of class, and is exiled from his parents' house. Millat repeatedly says...
Magid Iqbal
Magid is absent from his family's drama—and much of the plot of the novel—for eight years, because his father sent him to Bangladesh. When he comes back, he ends up smack dab in the middle of e...
Alsana Begum Iqbal
Alsana is the kind of person we might call feisty. She has an opinion about pretty much everything, and she's not exactly tight-lipped about it. Alsana's parents arranged her marriage to Samad befo...
Hortense Bowden
Hortense is Clara Bowden's strict (and strictly religious) mother. If she has a claim to fame, it would be that she was born during a massive and famous earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica. Using her b...
Marcus Chalfen
Marcus "the mad scientist" Chalfen's claim to fame is FutureMouse. This project involves genetically modifying a mouse's DNA so that the mouse will grow cancerous tumors at certain times, and even...
Joyce Chalfen
Joyce Chalfen would probably describe herself as part horticultural expert, part supermom, and part superwife. She takes being a wife and mother very, very seriously. The most important thing to kn...
Joshua Chalfen
Joshua Chalfen is totally the dark horse in White Teeth. Josh is in school with Irie and Millat, and though he is an intellectual (dare we say loveable nerd?) and doesn't cross paths with those two...
Minor Characters
Ryan ToppsIn White Teeth, Ryan Topps goes from Clara's not-so-attractive boyfriend to her mother's live-in helper. Huh? Allow us to explain. We first meet Ryan as the young man that young Clara is...