How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
It was partly for this reason that Irie didn't mention the Chalfens to her parents. It wasn't that she intended to mate with the Chalfens... but the instinct was the same. She had a nebulous fifteen-year-old's passion for them, overwhelming, yet with no real direction or object. She just wanted to, well, kind of, merge with them. She wanted their Englishness. Their Chalfenishness. The purity of it. It didn't occur to her that the Chalfens were, after a fashion, immigrants too (third generation, by way of Germany and Poland, né Chalfenovsky), or that they might be as needy of her as she was of them. To Irie, the Chalfens were more English than the English. (12.110)
To Irie, the Chalfens seem almost impossibly English. She can't see herself or her identity as important or interesting because she is too busy wanting to "merge with them."
Quote #8
I sometimes wonder why I bother," said Samad bitterly, betraying the English inflections of twenty years in the country, "I really do. These days, it feels to me like you make a devil's pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started... but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers—who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally housebroken. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil's pact... it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere." (15.193)
Samad talks to Irie about feeling that, in entering England, he has had to give up the comfort and sense of belonging that are attached to the place he's from. The way Samad sees it, you can only hold on to one identity at a time. Do his sons view identity in this way? What about Alsana?
Quote #9
"Yes, M— M— Mark," said Alsana, close to tears at this final snub, the replacement of "Mum" for "Amma." "Do not be late, now."
"I GIVE YOU A GLORIOUS NAME LIKE MAGID MAHFOOZ MURSHED MUBTASIM IQBAL!" Samad had yelled after Magid when he returned home that evening and whipped up the stairs like a bullet to hide in his room. "AND YOU WANT TO BE CALLED MARK SMITH!" (6.282-283)
Okay, is anyone else starting to think it's funny that Zadie Smith's last name is… Smith?