“You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.” –Zadie Smith

I have completed Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth.” It was a requirement for my current Experimental Fiction course. This book is the type of book that certainly needs to be read multiple times due to its dense saturation of underlying themes. To be honest, if it wasn’t a requirement for the course, I do not believe I would’ve decided to read it, but, and there is a but, now that I have read it, I found it to be extremely necessary. I do think adding this to the educational canon is a must. Our professor has assigned 7 different reads for this quarter and, sadly, I feel doing that will limit our dissection of the novels. I think the quarter could’ve survived on this book alone– that is how intense it is. I will write a separate book review, but I do want to focus on the quote above. Within the book, you will find that the characters face many situations and, in the end, they have all become stronger beings due to it. Remember, “Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.” –Charles Jones

There is not one person in this world that has not faced adversity of some sort. It is our personal duty to not become like a hard-boiled egg, hard shelled on the outside, breakable on the inside with a rotten aroma. Do not allow the hardship you faced change you from a wonderful person to a rotten one. You simply hurt yourself by building a wall and restrict others from taking part in getting to know your inner beauty. Do not become bitter, but allow these situations to make you a better, livelier person. You can overcome the current obstacle. You can face tomorrow. You can . . .you can . . . you can. The only question here is, will you? Let’s us befriend each other and provide a support for all who need it. I am here for you if  you need me.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” –Eleanor Roosevelt