81 pages • 2 hours read
Faiza GueneKiffe Kiffe Tomorrow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
TV and Movies
Doria constantly refers to television series and to films and the ways in which they shape her ideals, expectations, and memories. Her father’s departure is associated with The X-Files. Her ideas of romance and the perfect man are shaped by MacGyver, Titanic, and The Pretender, while her vision of the ideal family is influenced by Little House on the Prairie and Who’s the Boss? The characters on soap operas such as The Young and the Restless and Sunset Beach provide her with models of how to negotiate complex situations. She creates elaborate fantasies of her own based on pop-culture tropes, as when she finds herself defending Nabil and compares herself to a TV lawyer drawing a picture of a serial killer’s miserable childhood. As the novel progresses, Doria becomes more self-aware about how she uses movies and television as fantasy material and guidance, though she does not entirely abandon the habit.
Barbie Dolls
Barbie dolls represent a middle-class lifestyle Doria can only dream about, while also embodying a blond racial ideal she can never live up to. As a young girl who is late to enter puberty, she also envies Barbie’s generous plastic breasts. She imagines the daughters of her school teachers playing with “Dishwasher Barbie,” and compares the blond social worker, Mme. Du, whom she sees as privileged and self-absorbed, to a Barbie doll. Two journalists on TV are Brainy Ken and Smart Barbie. The extent of the jealousy and resentment Doria feels toward the ideal represented by Barbie is shown by her memory of mutilating her Barbie dolls, which were not even “real” Barbies, but cheaply made knockoffs named Francoise.
Classic French Literature
Traditional French high culture, which Doria feels alienated from but knows better than the French people around her seem to think, is represented by the names of classic French authors such as Molière and Voltaire. Hamoudi finds an emotional release in reciting the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. The middle-class Rousseau development, whose native French residents hold themselves apart from the residents of the Paradise estate and fear them as a source of crime, is ironically named for the romantic philosopher who popularized the idea of the noble savage.
Pork
In the novel, the Muslim ban on eating pork represents the barriers facing Muslims as they negotiate French society. Doria imagines their first social worker, evidently uncomfortable in the projects, going to the countryside to make and sell traditional foods, including pork sausage. Lila’s French father-in-law makes sure that every meal he prepares for Lila and her husband includes pork as a way of showing her that she is not welcome in their family. On the other hand, Doria remembers that a small blond boy in her old school was seen as an “ideal victim” by bullies in part because he ate pork in the cafeteria. Yasmina feels conflicted about serving pork at her new cafeteria job but admits being intrigued by it. When Doria learns of Youssef’s radicalization, she recalls him eating bacon-flavored chips out of curiosity and feels he has become a different person.
Clairvoyants and Fortune Telling
Doria’s initial sense of powerlessness and her fascination with the idea of fate manifests itself as a fascination with fortune telling. Doria pays close attention to stories of witchcraft, curses, and predictions. She collects the flyers handed out by psychics and “witch doctors” in the metro offering to help people take control of their destiny. She ponders stories of how people have shaped their lives in response to vague prophecies. Yasmina was told that a man would come from beyond the sea to marry her, but not that he would abandon her, while their neighbor, Shérif, spends his money gambling and playing the lottery because a clairvoyant said he would come into wealth, which he eventually does.
