Simi, Boo, and Ronke
Three friends who met in Bristol at university years ago and bonded over shared cultural elements in their lives. They become best friends, a tight-knit little network. Despite the shared commonalities, however, there are also differences within them individually, but these are not of the magnitude capable of tearing the friendship. They do keep secrets from each other, though, and these do contain the power to cause devastation. The friendship of the three symbolizes the mechanics of group cohesion. Any given faction of people—regardless of size—brought together and unified by commonality only stays together as a result of what is chosen not to be shared between them.
Eating
The central bonding activity of the group of friends is lunch. The rest of the novel contains multiple references to food and scenes of eating. Eating as a social mechanism becomes a multifaceted symbol as a result of the way it permeates the story. On the one hand, the commonality of the need to eat in order to survive makes food a symbol of universal unity which connects everyone to everybody else. On the other hand, the specificity of certain dishes that are isolated primarily within ethnic, cultural, or nationalistic groups serves to make eating certain dishes or restaurants specializing in a specific national cuisine a symbol of division rather than unity.
Isobel and the Chinese Restaurant in Nigeria
Isobel identifies a Chinese restaurant in Nigeria that enforces a special Nigerians-only dining section as a particularly egregious example of racial discrimination. Then she proceeds to use this example as justification for obliviously expressing her own racial bias toward all Chinese, accusing them of hating all black people. Though not explicitly saying so, the outburst is a scene in which Isobel essentially says she hates all Chinese people. Taken together collectively, the policy by the restaurant serving Chinese food to discriminate against Nigerian customers in their own country and Isobel’s expansion of this one specific example to justify her bias against an entire culture symbolizes the insidious way in which racism is instituted and systematized based on a complete absence of logic.
The Waltons
Amazingly in a novel taking place in 21st-century England, the 1970’s American television drama, The Waltons, still retains its power to be the go-to pop culture symbol of earnest family wholesomeness. The capacity of the Walton family to survive the harsh circumstances brought on as a result of the Great Depression by always supporting each other has endowed them as iconic symbols of wholesomeness, both sincerely and parodically. The show being referenced by a half-Nigerian character living in England in the age of social media indicates that they will continue to enjoy that symbolic significance for some time to come.
Fish, Rice and Football
The common bond uniting the four close friends is the specific shared experiences of being mixed-race women of half-Nigerian descent living in England. This duality of cultural experience is also symbolized through food, but in this case with the additional reference point of sports. “They were proud of being half Nigerian and half English. They loved jollof rice and fish finger sandwiches. They had two football teams to support.” The symbolism of a Nigerian dish and a British lunchtime mainstay separates the two cultures. This separation is then immediately rejoined by the common bond between both countries of loving the game of soccer. And then this bond is ripped again by virtue of both countries rooting for their own national teams only to be reconstructed once more with the comfort of those sharing this mixture of heritage to root equally for either the British or Nigerian team.
