By Brenda Maritza Lozano

When immigrants leave their home country, the decision tends to be catalyzed by a hope of a better life. The reason these immigrants leave their home can range from war, famine, poverty, crime, the list goes on. However, the end goal is to keep the next generation from enduring these negative experiences of the homeland and to set them a new location where there are opportunities for them to thrive. Unfortunately, like comedies in the theater where before the end of the story is the marriage and we never see what happens after the union, likewise here the tale of the migration adventure ends with the migrants’ arrival to their land of opportunity, but we rarely find out what happens after their arrival. The stories of the second-generation migrants are the stories that are not often explored yet are in the forefront in Zadie Smith’s 2000 novel White Teeth. In Smith’s novel we not only see the disenchantment of the migration in the adults but more importantly the out of place feeling that their children experienced as they roam London in search of purpose with an ambivalence whose root cause is not evident to them.  

When people are awarded advantages those around them think that said people now have it made. The reality could not be further from the truth, for example in Graham Flanagan’s article, SHAQ: How spending $1 million in one day changed my financial strategy forever, Shaquille O’neal shared an anecdote of how his 20-year-old self, spent his first 1-million-dollar endorsement deal in a day buying cars, jewelry, and electronics. He describes his actions as “It was me being overly happy-slash-irresponsible” after the spending spree he was informed that he had forgotten to subtract his agent’s 15% fee and the Texas state tax making him $80,000 in debt. O’neal literally went from being a millionaire and having all these opportunities to being broke in a day. The bank manager who was a family friend gave him warnings and advise on spending habits and from that day on he learned a lesson and acquired a financial advisor that multiplied his incoming wealth. Irie and Millat where born in the United Kingdom, specifically in London one of the wealthiest cities on earth from an outsider’s perspective their lives had to be full of opportunities to succeed in life, so what impedes them from doing so? Like O’neal on that irresponsible day of spending they did not have an advisor to share the wisdom of how to flourish in this new multicultural London. 

This lack of guidance towards the next generation is not a problem only found in modern English literature but very present earlier texts such as Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. In the novel we follow the story of Pip who is an orphaned boy found under the care of his older sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and her husband, a blacksmith, Mr. Joe Gargery. As pure coincidence Pip befriends an escaped convict who (unbeknownst to Pip) becomes his secret wealthy benefactor; this relation with the convict allows him to leave his position of poverty in the forge and travel to London to become a gentleman. Like the Irie and Millat, Pip is simply placed in a position of opportunity but is not offered guidance, yes one could argue that Wemmick and Herbert helped him blend in to more refined society, nevertheless when it came to his expectations, he had no direction as to how to manage his newfound wealth; instead meandered about London just spending money with no clue how to sustain or make the most of his opportunities. In the last few paragraphs of the first part of Great Expectations Pip leaves his childhood home and narrates his leaving by saying “I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High-street” (Dickens 160). The throwing of an old shoe is an old-folk tradition from England usually employed at the end of weddings as the couples leave the church. There are many theories as to its original symbolism, one being that the throwing of the shoe is a surviving gesture of the defense of women against wife catching, the second theory which is considered the more traditional one entails the throwing of an old shoe as a symbol of wishing the couple good-luck in their future life (Crombie 263-265).  The third and final theory relates to the end of a familial responsibility, in James E. Crombie’s article Shoe-throwing at Weddings he informs us the reasoning behind this last shoe-throwing theory as, “…a renunciation of authority or dominion over the bride by the father or guardian; and the receipt of the shoe by the bridegroom, even if accidental, was an omen that the authority was transferred to him” (Dickens 265). Had Biddy and Joe been able to throw an old shoe at him as Pip knew they would have done; this would have represented a visual confirmation of the renunciation of the relationship and responsibility that did occur between Pip and his family after his departure and with this rupture so did the advice and guidance he used to receive from Joe and Biddy. In a sense this renunciation of familial responsibility, senza the shoe-throwing, is present in the home of Irie and Millat, the parents have placed their children in a country bursting with wealth, in a great neighborhood, and in a good school while providing food and shelter but there was a sort of renunciation of responsibility once those things were met, leaving the children with no guidance on how navigate this new life. 

In their homes Irie and Millat’s father figures are absent when it comes to upbringing therefor it is the mothers who are instilling in them the values of a Bengali or Jamaican home. As these babies grow however, these children leave the safety of their homes and go forth to grow into young adults in London where their values do not correspond with the established values of white English society. After the dissolution of many of the English colonies and the end of the Second World War there was a great migration into mainland England, turning its mostly homogenous population into a multiracial potpourri made up of its previous colonial subjects (Kirpikh 117). Irie and Millat represent the second-generation population of their parent’s migration; however instead of being considered the new multicultural face of the English population they are instead in this no man’s land where they don’t entirely belong to their Jamaican or Bengali roots but they also don’t belong in the established white English way of life. They are constantly being critiqued by their parents for not making most of their opportunity or constantly internalizing the microaggressions of the Caucasian Englander that constantly remind them that they are “other”. Even as they find themselves physically in the land of opportunity the lack of a parental figure to guide them or an advisor to help them thrive. Clara the mother of Irie was brought up thinking that the main values in life are those of faith and Alsana was brought up to be the perfect bride and wife in Bengal therefore that is all the life experience they can offer their children. As to the fathers Archibald is a conformist who has no ambition in life but to simply get by while Samad is a man who has in the middle of a mid-life crisis and is so worried about himself to worry about his children (when he does is only because he worries how their upbringing reflects on him) so yet again they have no desire or knowledge to impart to their children. Erie is three quarters English one quarter Jamaican her very own physical form as a person was something than the white English society was not ready to accept or tolerate as she is growing into a young woman. She being one of the first of this multicultural hybridity had no one to relate too or who to address this lack of understanding of her identity. There she was, this teenage, big hipped, curly haired girl in a world where in every corner she was bombarded with advertisements that depicted her body and hair type as undesirable as Zadie Simth eloquently words it, “There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection. A stranger in a stranger land.” (222). On the other hand, we have Millat the second born male twin in his Muslim family, who because he was not as precocious as his older brother is labelled as less than since primary school, by his teachers, parents, and relatives. He was such a second-class citizen in his own home and in addition he had to deal with racist abuse on daily basis by the white English population, both these rejections left him always seeking acceptance from others. As he begins to be a young adult, he used his looks to seek validation with mostly English women, he also used recreational drugs to numb his feelings of feeling alone and misunderstood, and how often happens he eventually found acceptance with the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorius Islamic Nation (or KEVIN as referenced in the novel), who finally fulfilled his need for being special and wanted. KEVIN was Islamic extremist cult/gang that needed good-looking and charismatic members like Millat to convert others to their wayward causes. Which brings us back to the main point, the lack of parental guidance in the land of opportunity, the reason for Millat falls into the clutches of a cult like KEVIN can be attributed to the fact that when he was growing up, he was babysat by videogames rather than nurtured parent, when he felt like he had no place in his family he looked for refuge in gangster/mafia movies and music that make him feel like that community offered him the sense of belonging he had not received from his family or his community. Yes, Irie and Millat are placed in London a wealthy city filled with ample opportunity, but as second-generation immigrants they were the unwanted by the white English society and left with no guidance as to how to navigate their new role in England; These two facts alone diminished their opportunities and in reality, had a smaller chance of succeeding than their white counterparts whose families had lived in England for generations, families like the Chalfen’s. The Chalfen’s had generations upon generations prosperous family members, the family unit we meet in the novel have the map to success so mastered that both the parents are intellectuals and have a brood of mini-savants that are most likely will continue to prosper as well as the generations they will add to the Chalfen name. 

 As a second-generation immigrant to the United States myself, the out of place feeling the children in the novel feel is all too familiar. There is a very popular saying in the millennial Latin-American community “No soy ni de aquí ni de allá” which translates to I am neither from here nor there, this saying incapsulates the role of interlopers that second-generation immigrants have in both the society where we live in and the society from whence our parents came. My personal experience is very typical of Mexicans living close to the San Ysidro International Port of Entry. My parents living in Tijuana, Mexico crossed the border into San Diego so that my birth would take place in the United States (US) granting me the coveted Estadounidense nationality. Immediately after my mother was discharged, my infant self was taken to Tijuana where I continued to live until I moved to San Diego in the 4th grade. Living in San Diego I continued my education in Tijuana until I finished 7th grade where that out of place feeling with my peers in Mexico had already started as they saw me as other for being fully bilingual and living in another country. However, it was not until I was 12 years old that I fully lived in the US where I lived through one of the biggest culture shocks attending an American public school after a lifetime of attending a private catholic school, to having to wear everyday clothing and not a uniform and to learn, read, write in English rather than Spanish. Of all these adjustments none was more jarring than being dropped into a melting pot of ethnicities after growing up in a mostly homogenous group, not only did I feel like a duck out of water but invisible, I was the one person that did not look like the others.  

The relating factor between Shaquille O’neal’s and Irie, Magid, and myself is that we all were placed in a position of opportunity but had no direction given to us by the previous generation. O’neal’s parents never having been millionaires could not have and did not advise him to manage his money, the parents of the children in White Teeth not knowing exactly what knowledge, tools, social understanding, and protection their children needed were left to fend for themselves in a country in controlled by white English society that did not treat them with kindness or equality. My parents not knowing the American education system failed to guide me on what was a GPA, an SAT, or a FAFSA application and how I would need to master all three to acquire the university degree they expected me to acquire. The sacrifice of all these immigrant parents ended the sacrifice of the migration, there was an unofficial renunciation of the responsibility they had to steer their children in a foreign land. At the end of it all, having opportunity is not enough to stop you from squandering millions in a day, not enough from hating your body because it is different from the desired body type, not enough to keep you from joining a violent group because of the feeling of inadequacy, or to keep you from having an identity crisis while refusing to say the US pledge of allegiance because it felt like it tantamounted to turning your back to your Mexican roots. What was needed for Irie and Millat was someone to not only guide them through the way of living in London but for someone to have made them see that their identity issue would be resolved by accepting the beautiful duality that they represented.