White Teeth: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Marcus and Magid become pen pals from March 1991 onward, and Irie, tasked with Marcus’s filing, steals several of the letters to read them: she discovers that “no love letters could have been more ardent” than the letters between Marcus and Magid. The men express admiration for each other’s intelligence and ideas, and in one letter, Marcus writes that he doesn’t “hold out much hope for [Irie’s] aspirations,” suggesting that she should become a dentist instead.

Millat is having problems with white women: he has the choice of “every luscious female from a size 8 to a 28,” but he chooses to mingle with “size 10 white Protestant women aged fifteen to twenty-eight.” Karina Cain is his present amour, a girl he actually likes; at one meeting of KEVIN, though, Hifan and Tyrone give Millat a leaflet called Who Is Truly Free? The Sisters of KEVIN or the Sisters of Soho? After reading the leaflet, Millat begins to feel irritated by Karina, though he continues to meet up with her. Still, he begins to notice that she dresses provocatively, and it seems to Millat that she’s trying to get attention from men. He tells Karina that he cannot respect her until she respects herself, and Karina tells him that she does respect herself.

After working a shift at the Palace for extra money, Millat walks by a café and sees a “demure-looking Indian woman” sitting alone. Millat walks in and starts talking to her about the “liberation of the veil,” telling the woman that by wearing a hijab, she will be “free to be who she is inside, immune from being portrayed as sex symbol.” The woman rebuffs him gently, and as he walks away from the café, he becomes enraged; he calls Karina Cain from a phone booth and abruptly breaks up with her. Millat shows up at the Chalfen house that night, “weepy and violent.” Joyce believes that Millat is “filled with self-revulsion and hatred of his own kind.”

Meanwhile, Irie is arguing with Clara over her decision to take a “year off” in Africa before going to school for dentistry. On October 25, 1991, at 1 a.m., Irie goes to her mother’s bedroom, knowing that her mother “was most vulnerable when in bed”; she demands to talk to Clara, asking her for her permission to go to Africa. Clara is against the idea, since she believes Irie will be going to “ogle at poor black folk.” In the darkness, Irie kicks over a glass of water and finds a pair of dentures. She realizes that Clara’s teeth are false, and she is shocked to discover this new example of her family’s tendency to keep secrets. Irie thinks that her parents are “full of information” that she wants to know but is afraid to ask about, and so she packs her rucksack and travels to Hortense’s house.