From Buckingham Palace to Jamaican Patties

I think we all surprise ourselves at how awake we are for our first full day in London!

Most of us powered through the exhaustion the day before and took the chance to explore the city and orient ourselves while completing a scavenger hunt activity and finding lunch and dinner. Today, we’re finding our feet in our normal class schedule.

We leave St. Athans, our hotel, in twos and threes to pick up breakfast at nearby Pret a Manger, a chain which offers cheap, quick breakfast options, before returning for our first class session discussing White Teeth.

Our first book, by Zadie Smith, follows fifty years in the intertwined lives of two British families with immigrant roots living in London during the last half of the twentieth century. The Iqbals – Samad, Alsana, and their twins Magid and Millat – are Bengali while the Joneses – Archie, Clara, and their daughter Irie – mix British (Archie) and Jamaican (Clara) heritages.

Actually reading White Teeth in London is incredible. We’re able to match the experiences of the Iqbals and the Joneses with our own explorations of the city. For example, Smith describes taking the bus towards Parliament Square and passing Buckingham Palace, which is the same route we followed this morning after class to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham.

Smith also muses about the jerk chicken and Jamaican dumplings that Clara’s mother makes for her and Clara makes for her daughter, Irie. For lunch today, we sought out the Jamaica Patty Company, which sells hand pies with a variety of fillings including jerk chicken. We literally tasted a piece of the Jamaican heritage Smith writes about.

Walking through the city this afternoon, I noticed that street and Underground signs are often written in English and various South Asian scripts in certain neighborhoods, including Bengali. They felt like little waves hello from the Iqbals.

Eating the food they might have eaten and walking the paths they might have walked brings us closer to the characters of Smith’s White Teeth. As we finish the book tonight, I know I’ll be comparing our first day in the city with Samad, Alsana, Magid, Millat, Archie, Clara, and Irie. We have a city in common now.

Blog post provided by Claire Franz, a senior double major in history and secondary education.