White Teeth by Zadie Smith

 “’Haven’t you ever wondered why he hasn’t snogged you?’ ‘Because I’m ugly. And fat. With an Afro.’ ‘No, fuckface, because you’re all he’s got. He needs you. You two have history. You really know him. Look how confused he is. One day he’s Allah this, Allah that. Next minute it’s big busty blondes, Russian gymnasts, and a smoke of the sinsemilla. He doesn’t know who he is. But you know him, at least a little, you’ve known all sides of him. And he needs that. You’re different.’ Irie rolled her eyes. Sometimes you want to be different. And sometimes you’d give the hair on your head to be the same as everybody else. – ‘But the truth is the Barbra Streisand cut you’ve got there ain’t doing shit for you. The Afro was cool, man. It was wicked. It was yours.” (Smith, 237).

In this excerpt of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, the author conveys the longing people have for concrete history and yet the need to pull away from that history at the same time. Irie longs to know who exactly she is, and yet changes her appearance and is insecure about most things, just simply due to it not being the norm for the area she is living. Instead of embracing these differences, she rejects them just as Millat is rejecting his own history while going back and forth with the idea of embracing this. The sole idea of this excerpt is the need to embrace their own history for the sake of their own happiness. Just as Irie is changing her hair, Millat is switching back and forth with his interests. Altogether, the author is stating that one has to embrace oneself. The Afro is Irie, the history is Millat, and they will help each other get to their roots.