1. Zadie Smith in Speaking in Tongues mentions a Reggae bar and exclaims, "But wait: all the way uptown? A crazy reggae bar? For a minute I hesitated, becasue I was at a lovely party having a lovely time. Or was that it?"(194) Why does the author spend so much time focusing on the Reggae bar?
2. "It never occurred to me that I was leaving the London district of Willesden for Cambridge. I thought I was adding Cambridge to Willesden, this new way of talking to that old way. Adding a new kind of knowledge to a different kind that I already had" (179). Is it possible to keep both sides of your identity without alteration or shame?
3. "By the end of his experiment, Professor Higgins has make his Eliza an awkward, in-between thing, neither flower girl nor lady, with one voice lost and another gained, at the steep price of evertything she was and everything she knows" (181). Why couldn't Eliza just be a high class lady in a flower shop like she planned the whole movie?
4. "If you go (metaphorically speaking down the British class scale, you've gone from cockney to "mockney," and can expect a public tarring and feathering; to go the other way is to perform an unforgivable act of class betrayal"(180). Why is accents so important in Britain?
5. "But I haven't described Dream City. I'll try to. It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion. Naturally, Obama was born there. So was I. When your personal multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair, and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin- well, anyone can see you come from Dream City" (184). Does seeming two-sided ensure that you are from Dream City? Do you inherit it? What happens if you are one-sided but look two?
6. "He talking down to white people- how curious it sounds the other way round!" (189) Why does the author's race mean so much to her?
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