Little Bee and Sarah represent two different worlds: war-torn Nigeria and sophisticated London. Although they seem unlikely companions, both make a sincere effort to understand each other’s life and culture, and thus model both the struggles and benefits of cross-cultural relationships. Although there is much that separates them, Sarah and Little Bee’ relationship suggests that people from different worlds can learn from each other, and their shared human experience ultimately unites them.
Little Bee and Sarah come from contrasting worlds and experiences, which creates an initial divide between them. Little Bee is a teenage Nigerian refugee from a poor village who has never seen a city before her arrival in England; Sarah is an upper-class, sophisticated magazine editor from London. Little Bee’s primary concerns are mere survival and the loss of her family; before Andrew’s death, Sarah is primarily occupied with her career, the fashion world, and all the minor things about Andrew that irritate her. The first time that Little Bee and Sarah meet on a beach in Nigeria, the extreme cultural divide between the two women makes it difficult for Sarah to put herself in Little Bee’s shoes. When Little Bee tells Sarah that mercenaries are trying to kill her and her sister and begs for protection, Sarah cannot even comprehend the weight of what Little Bee is saying because the concept is so far beyond her frame of reference. In the moment, Sarah thinks, “I was a modern woman and disappointment was something I understood better than fear. The hunters would kill her? My stomach lurched, but my mind still asserted it was just a figure of speech.” Although Sarah eventually realizes that Little Bee is telling the truth, her reticence to believe what the girl is saying demonstrates the way in which such a sharp cultural divide can make it difficult for people to connect with one another or regard their experiences seriously.
As Little Bee and Sarah struggle to understand each other and make sense of the world the other person lives in, they each gain a new perspective that helps them understand their own lives better as well. Little Bee’s background and life-and-death struggle help Sarah to realize how banal much of modern life is and how little she knows about the rest of the world. After Little Bee fully recounts the way that Nkiruka was killed, Sarah recalls mournfully how insane it was for her and Andrew to take a vacation to Nigeria for the sake of “being unconventional” and the gall of unwittingly wearing a bikini in the midst of an oil war, while Little Bee and Nkiruka were running for their lives. The new perspective that Little Bee offers Sarah though their relationship helps Sarah to recognize that all the things she’d once obsessed over, especially her modern sophisticated career, suddenly seem insignificant.
After spending time with Little Bee, Sarah attempts to return to her magazine office, but the constant rushing of people and white noise of office machines “all seemed suddenly insane” in light of the fact that elsewhere in the world, people are suffering. This new perspective ultimately causes Sarah to quit her job to pursue more meaningful work. In a similar way, Little Bee’s relationship with Sarah offers her safety and support in the midst of an overwhelmingly painful and chaotic life. Sarah shows Little Bee the stability that the developed world affords, which is briefly symbolized by the icemaker in Sarah’s kitchen. Although it is a simple device, Little Bee finds herself entranced by the way it makes water into a solid, stable form, symbolizing the stability and dependability of modern life. This causes Little Bee to believe that “everything could be made solid again […] of only I could find the center, the source of all these small wonders,” suggesting that she can now envision an actual stable life for herself, rather than just running as she always has. Little Bee and Sarah both grow from their relationship with each other precisely because they are so different, which ultimately suggests that such a connection between two people from vastly different backgrounds may be difficult, but it is also beneficial to both.
Despite their cultural and personal differences, Little Bee and Sarah discover that they are both united by common human experiences. Little Bee and Sarah bond over pain at losing loved ones—Nkiruka for Little Bee and Andrew for Sarah—and especially over their love for Sarah’s son, Charlie, whom Little Bee forms a close connection with. In the final scene of the novel, after Little Bee gives herself up to Nigerian soldiers to save Charlie’s life, she watches as he plays in the waves with a group of Nigerian children and cries with joy to see him so happy—even though she herself will likely die. Little Bee says, “[He] was beautiful, and this is a word […] I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language.” Little Bee’s closing line suggests that although people from different parts of the world may seem utterly foreign to each other, as human beings there is so much that unites them just the same, such as the beauty of a healthy, happy child.
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Cross-Cultural Relationships Quotes in Little Bee
That summer—the summer my husband died—we all had identities we were loath to let go of. My son had his Batman costume, I still used my husband’s surname, and Little Bee, though she was relatively safe with us, still clung to the name she had taken in a time of terror. We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refuges from ourselves.
In place of my finger is a stump, a phantom digit that used to be responsible for the E, D, and C keys on my laptop. I can’t rely on E, D, and C anymore. They go missing when I need them most. Pleased becomes please. Ecstasies becomes stasis.
How calm my eyes were, since that day on the beach in Africa. When there has been a loss so fundamental I suppose that to lose just one more thing—a finger, perhaps, or a husband—is of absolutely no consequence at all.
“I just think this is not our affair and so…”
“Ah,” the killer said. “Not your affair.”
He turned to the other hunters and spread his arms.
“Not his affair, him say. Him say, this is black-man business. Ha ha ha ha! […] First time I hear white man say my business not his business. You got our gold. You got our oil. What is wrong with our girls?”
I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fluorescent lights, the buzzing of the fax machines, and the fluid chatter of the editorial girls on their phones to fashion houses. It all seemed suddenly insane, like wearing a little green bikini to an African war.
“Save [Little Bee] and there’s a whole world of them behind her. A whole swarm of Little Bees, coming here to feed.”
“Or to pollinate.”
“You start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world. Then you get a little bit older, maybe Little Bee’s age, and you realize that some of the world’s badness is inside you, that maybe you’re part of it. And then you get a little bit older still, and a bit more comfortable, and you start wondering if the badness you’ve seen in yourself is really all that bad at all.”
The boy’s father had dark skin, darker even than my own, and the boy’s mother was a white woman. They were holding hands and smiling at their boy, whose skin was light brown. It was the color of the man and the woman joined in happiness. It was such a good color that tears came into my eyes.
I smiled and watched Charlie running away with the children , with his head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful […] and that is a word I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language.
