Clothes (Symbol/Motif)
Throughout Anita and Me, clothes are used as a representation of culture and identity, used to separate communities, and later to create community. For Meena, the sari, a traditional South Asian garment, becomes a symbol of her Indian heritage. The sari is used as a literal marker, helping Meena to pinpoint her mother amongst the surrounding scenery: “I could see my mother, even at this distance her brown skin glowed like a burnished planet drifting amongst the off-white bedsheets of her neighbours […] with one motion [she] shook out a peacock-blue sari” (p. 12). Later, the sari is used as a metaphorical marker of Meena’s Indian community, when Meena describes her Aunties: “whose communal contempt was a curse wrapped up in sweet sari-shaped packages” (p. 33). So, when Anita dines with the Kumars, and Anita is confronted for the first time with Meena’s Indian customs, there is a symbolic importance to Meena and Anita spending the evening exploring Meena’s wardrobe, trying “every suit and dupatta on” (p. 256). In sharing clothes, the two are symbolically sharing culture and creating community.
Other examples are sprinkled throughout the novel: the members of Sam’s gang distinguish themselves using skinhead fashion, which becomes a symbol of their worsening bigotry; at the fairgrounds, Meena’s insecurity alongside Anita, Sherrie, and Fat Sally is encapsulated in the girls’ different manner of dress, with Meena wearing a rain jacket and the others wearing mini-skirts and tight-fitting dresses.
Names (Symbol)
In Anita and Me, names often do more than simply refer: they also characterize and symbolize. There is Mr. Topsy, whose real name Meena later learns is Mr. Turvey. His name becomes a wordplay on the phrase “topsy-turvy” (meaning: wrong side up), and may symbolize Meena’s conflicted feelings towards him when she learns that he is fluent in Punjabi and served in India as part of the British military. There is the Ballbearings Committee, the name used to describe the group of women factory workers in Tollington. As Meena describes, the name characterizes their group behavior: they “lived together and played together, and bounced off the village boundaries like a ballbearing against the sides of a pinball machine” (p. 19). And there is Tracey’s dog, named after the racial slur, the N-word, whose name denotes Tollington’s normalized racism.
Consider, also, how names are used to create and symbolize intimacy. Meena calls all South Asian adults “Auntie” and “Uncle,” even if they aren’t related, symbolizing the tight-knit nature of the South Asian community. And, when Nanima calls Meena “junglee” (meaning a wild child), Meena feels an increased affection for her Nanima, because the name symbolizes Nanima’s acceptance of Meena’s bombastic personality.
The Big House (Symbol)
At the novel’s start the Big House, a mansion occupied by the former mine owner, has a foreboding presence in Tollington: its occupants are unknown and deeply secretive; Anita even convinces Meena that a child-eating witch lives inside. In this condition, the mysterious mansion symbolizes Tollington’s fear of the unknown, becoming a threat through its otherness. But, by the novel’s end, Meena finally meets the Big House’s occupants: a highly educated Indian man, Harinder Singh, and his French wife Mireille. Suddenly, the mansion becomes a place of surprising diversity, and a place of solace, suggesting that when the unknown becomes known, and the unfamiliar becomes familiar, then fear can turn into comfort.
Birds/Flight (Motif)
Images of birds and flight recur throughout Anita and Me, and are often associated with Meena’s dreams of the future. In Chapter 1, birds and flight have a foreboding presence. Before Meena confesses to lying, a kestrel (a bird of prey) lets out “a faint cry, sharp and forlorn” (p. 15)—perhaps Meena feels vulnerable, like prey; or maybe Meena sees herself as a predator, having stolen from Mr. Ormerod. Elsewhere in Chapter 1, when Meena describes the trees near the Big House, she says, “chestnuts and poplars […] would talk to me urgently, telling me to open the window, spread my arms and flap over the fields to their waiting branches” (p. 13). Here, flight becomes associated with temptation, and Meena’s desire to explore the unknown (the Big House).
At the end of Chapter 2, Meena describes how she is unlike her peers, showing interest in gross objects like dead birds; when describing such birds, Meena says, “filmy eyes and bloody beaks open with surprise, maybe with their last thought that mama had made flying look so easy” (p. 36). Soon after, Meena asks, “When would anything dangerous and cruel ever happen to me?” (p. 36). If flight symbolizes Meena’s dreams and hopes, then the dead birds might symbolize the naivete of Meena’s dreams—especially her excitement towards “danger” and “cruel[ty].” The dead birds, instead, suggest a harsher reality, one that is not “so easy.”
The most direct link between flight and Meena’s future appears in Chapter 3, when Meena says, “I just wished whatever my destiny was would hurry up and introduce itself to me so I could take it by its jewelled hand and fly” (p. 59).
And when Meena tries to escape her pain after Anita’s betrayal by riding away on Sherrie’s horse, she feels “the rushing of air which filled my ears, my eyes and nose, entered my open mouth like a flock of birds, my cheeks flapping in time to their wings” (p. 278). As she tries to escape, Meena feels as though she were a bird, flying away. Of course, her flight is impermanent: Meena gets bucked from the horse, and falls to the hard earth. In this instance, Meena fails to fly, and fails to escape reality.
'To Kill A Mockingbird' (Symbol/Allusion)
Meera Syal, author of Anita and Me—when asked to choose a cultural work that left a significant impact on her life—selected To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Explaining her choice on BBC Front Row, Meera said, “After reading [To Kill A Mockingbird], I suddenly realized that the racism wasn’t about me. It was actually much more about the people that were exponents of it.” This is a thematic message that Meera Syal continues in Anita and Me—through her portrayals of Anita and Sam, characters whose aggression largely stems from insecure home lives.
So, there is a certain symbolic importance to Meena Kumar’s choice to gift Robert a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird in Chapter 12 of Anita and Me. Meena describes To Kill A Mockingbird, calling it “a book I had tried to read and found too dense, but which had recently won some big prize in America and was supposedly a great learning experience” (p. 296). Anita and Me is often engaged in a dialogue with To Kill A Mockingbird, often exploring similar (but different) themes through similar (but different) plot constructions. Both are coming-of-age novels, confronting racial tensions through the reflective narration of a young, tomboyish girl: in Mockingbird, Scout Finch, and in Anita and Me, Meena Kumar. Ironically, Meena confesses her inability to comprehend To Kill A Mockingbird, even though she and Scout share similar narratives. This suggests that Meena has yet to fully understand her own story: that she is still maturing, still learning.
