Girl, Woman, Other

Carole, a young financial executive, reflects on her struggle to succeed in a male-dominated workplace. She traces her love of math to her mother. She recalls how she used math to endure the pain and humiliation of being gang-raped as a teenager at her friend LaTisha’s party: “Carole forces herself to think of her favourite number, 1729” (126). A young man named Trey was the ringleader.

After the rape, Carole told no one but decided to turn her life around. With the help of her teacher, Mrs. Shirley King, Carole began to excel in school. She eventually got into the prestigious Oxford University, where she felt like a misfit due to her race and working-class background. When Carole suggested that she might drop out of school, her mother, Bummi, replied, “[Y]ou must go back and fight the battles that are your British birthright, Carole, as a true Nigerian” (143). Heeding her mother’s words, Carole befriended a host of wealthy students who exposed her to a new side of life. She began coming home less and turning her nose up at her mother’s traditional Nigerian food.

She is now engaged to Freddy, a wealthy white British man who admits to her that he skated through college and his career search on his parents’ connections.