White Teeth: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Irie Jones, who is now 15, has begun to dream about an ad she saw on a lamppost between her home and Glenard Oak Comprehensive, her school. It reads: “LOSE WEIGHT TO EARN MONEY,” and Irie, who is overweight—with “Hortense’s substantial Jamaican frame”—is obsessed with losing weight, even though Clara tells her there’s nothing wrong with her. During her English class, she doodles a picture of her body and is caught by her teacher, Mrs. Olive Roody, while the children are reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 127. Puberty has “separated these old friends,” Irie Jones and Millat Iqbal: Irie is insecure about her appearance, while Millat (on whom she harbors an intense crush) is traditionally attractive and highly popular, desired and respected by their peers.

Mrs. Roody asks the students to interpret a line from the sonnet, and Joshua Chalfen, “the only kid in class who volunteered opinions,” raises his hand to explain the line in question. Millat mocks Joshua, and Mrs. Roody makes Millat leave the classroom. Irie asks if the woman in the sonnet, described as a “dark” woman, is black, and Mrs. Roody explains that it wouldn’t be possible for Shakespeare to have written about a black woman, since there weren’t any black women in England in Shakespeare’s time. At the end of the class, Irie is passed a note that reads: “By William Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BITCHEZ.”

After school, Irie turns up to an appointment at P.K.’s Afro Hair: Design and Management, where a hairstylist, Jackie, asks her about her ethnicity. Irie says that she is half Jamaican, half English, and she tells Jackie that she wants her hair to be completely straightened. Jackie tells her that she shouldn’t have washed her hair recently, since the ammonia used for straightening will burn her scalp. At P.K.’s, straightening black women’s hair is painful, difficult, and often unsuccessful, but the women patrons are obsessed with attaining completely straight hair—“straight straight flickable, wind-blowable locks.”

Andrea, another hair stylist, appraises Irie’s hair, calling it beautiful. Irie insists that Andrea straighten it, but two minutes after she applies ammonia, Irie feels her scalp burning. She blacks out, and when she comes to, her hair has fallen out in clumps. Andrea calls Paul King, a white man in his mid-50s who owns the salon—a business he developed after discovering that “women on low income were […] prepared to spend hundreds of pounds per month on their hair”—and who tells Andrea to give Irie a “freebie.” Andrea sends Irie to a store called Roshi’s Haircare for “eight packets of number-five-type black hair with a red glow.”

Irie approaches the counter at the store, where an Indian girl whose hair has been “shorn haphazardly” is arguing with the shopkeeper, “a hugely fat woman in a sari.” The Indian girl wants more than 25 pounds, but the woman in the sari refuses to give her any more, calling her “ungrateful.” When Irie asks for the hair that Andrea has told her about, the shopkeeper hands over the hair that the Indian girl has just sold to the store, telling her that many black women want Indian hair. A black woman in line behind Irie mutters that “some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much […] And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once.” The woman in the sari insists that she is “just providing a service,” and that she is not a racist; it’s not her fault if black people want straighter hair or paler skin. Afterward, Irie encounters the black woman outside the store, who tells her that she hates the place.

Five and a half hours later, Irie has a “full head of long, straight, reddish-black hair,” a weave. Irie walks to the Iqbal house, where she encounters Neena and Maxine, Neena’s girlfriend, who react with shock when they see her new hairstyle. Irie wants to see Millat, since she wants to impress him with her hair. Neena says that ever since she’s known Irie, Irie has followed Millat “around like a lost dog”: the reason he hasn’t been interested in her romantically is because the two have “history,” and know each other, whereas Millat doesn’t know the women he sleeps with. Alsana complains to Irie about Neena and Maxine’s “homosexuality,” and Irie encounters Samad briefly, who she thinks seems sad. Alsana tells her that he is sad about Magid, showing her a photo of Magid—still in Bangladesh—with the Indian writer R. V. Saraswati, whom Samad calls a “colonial-throwback.”

Magid has written to his family to tell them about his meeting with Saraswati, noting that it is his “intention to make the Asian countries sensible places, where order prevailed.” Magid writes that Indians “must be more like the English,” since the English “do not listen to history unless it is telling them what they wish to hear.” Samad is frustrated because Magid seems to have abandoned his Muslim beliefs, while Alsana tells him that he must let Magid go because it’s only natural that a child born in England would think differently than one born in Bangladesh.

Glenard Oak—Irie and Millat’s school—was built in two stages, first in 1886 as a workhouse, and then added to in 1963, when it became a school. The school contains “patches, hangouts, disputed territories, satellite states, states of emergency, ghettos, enclaves, islands”: all different factions that battle with each other. Many of the students take and exchange drugs and smoke cigarettes, in part because cigarettes have a “power to bring people together across cultures and faiths.”

At school, Irie is looking for Millat, since she has heard through the grapevine that there is going to be a raid on marijuana possession at the school. She finds him smoking a joint with a friend, Hifan, who is telling him that “marijuana weakens one’s abilities, one’s power, and takes our best men away from us in this country.” Hifan tells Irie and Millat that he is from the “Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation,” or KEVIN, while Irie tries desperately to tell Millat about the raid. She accidentally steps on Joshua Chalfen’s Goblins and Gorgons game, and Joshua looks up at her: he sits behind her in orchestra, and he thinks of her as “clever and not entirely un-pretty.” Joshua suspects that even though she is friends with the popular, attractive Millat, Irie is actually a nerd like Joshua.

Joshua tells Irie that he likes her short hair (she has had the weave removed), and he asks if he can smoke some of her joint. Irie passes him the joint just as the raid committee enters the yard, catching Millat, Irie, and Joshua in the act of smoking weed. Later, the headmaster of Glenard Oak—a “bleeding-heart liberal” who believes in “problem solving” rather than “behavior chastisement”—calls them into his office to explain the situation. Irie tells the headmaster that the weed was Millat’s, and Joshua held the joint for her while she tied her shoelace; Joshua, though, tries to cover for Irie, telling the headmaster that he has become a marijuana dealer. The headmaster punishes the children by mandating that Irie and Millat go to Joshua’s house every Tuesday and Thursday for study group, since he believes that Irie and Millat will benefit from spending time with the impressive Chalfen family.

The history of Glenard Oak traces back to Sir Edmund Flecker Glenard, who started the school as a workhouse for English and Caribbean people. A successful colonialist living in Kingston, Jamaica at the beginning of the 20th century, Sir Edmund donated money to a missionary group in London to start a factory, using immigrants from Jamaica as laborers. Glenard was killed in the 1907 Kingston earthquake while Irie’s grandmother, Ambrosia, looked on; meanwhile, the workhouse had begun to fail as an operation, and the Jamaicans were left to die or become sideshow exhibits in the British Empire Exhibition. The narrator notes that the headmaster, who believes in Glenard Oak as a great institution of education, is wrong: “Glenard could not be said to have passed on any great edifying beacon to future generations.”