How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
O'Connell's is no place for strangers.
O'Connell's is the kind of place family men come to for a different kind of family. Unlike blood relations, it is necessary here to earn one's position in the community […] (8.1-2)
We have to admit that O'Connell's has a strange vibe. It's full of men who seem to be in roughly the same social class but who are very different in many other ways. People say that friends are like family you get to choose; Archie and Samad chose O'Connell's, and ended up with each other.
Quote #8
He had to please all of the people all of the time. To the Cockney wide-boys in the white jeans and the colored shirts he was the joker, the risk-taker, respected lady-killer. To the black kids he was fellow weed-smoker and valued customer. To the Asian kids, hero and spokesman. Social chameleon. And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere. (11.29)
How is it that Millat has so much social currency and so little sense of belonging? And what exactly allows Millat to move so freely between social groups? Are there any groups he doesn't have access to?
Quote #9
Like any school, Glenard Oak had a complex geography […] The school had learned to its cost that you cannot unite a thousand children under one Latin tag (school code: Laborare est Orare, To Labor is to Pray); kids are like pissing cats or burrowing moles, marking off land within land, each section with its own rules, beliefs, laws of engagement. (11.257)
Perhaps it is no surprise to you that a thousand children in a school are not all easily united under one motto. When we see where a few of these kids come from, the houses they go home to, and the neighborhoods they live in, it becomes clear that Irie and Millat's school is a fairly accurate representation of the wider world in which they live—it's very diverse.