Transformative dystopia in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth

This paper explores a hitherto unexplored issue in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), and namely the meaningfulness of the fact that two of the main characters in the novel, the Englishman Alfred Archibald Jones (Archie) and the Indian Bengali – Samad Iqbal, go through an extreme dystopian experience leading to their discovery of multiculturalism during World War II in the spaces of a defunct British tank and of a little Bulgarian village near the Greek and Turkish border. The paper examines some of the cultural incongruities in the novel, which renders the “Bulgarian” experience there locked in a dystopian space generated by the Bulgarian village as well as delineates the transformative significance of this experience in Archie’s and Samad’s awakening to multiculturalism.

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth: Dubious Existence of Cultural Authenticity

This paper argues the cultural authenticity is a questionable conception. Zadie Smith’s debut novel, White Teeth features characters like Samad Miah Iqbal and Hortense Bowden who aredetermined toretain cultural purity. Through this projection,presumably, Smith intends to satirize their efforts and substantiates her claim that cultural purity cannot maintained, especially, when the immigrants come to the host country. Despite the guarding of one’s culture, the breaching of the cultural integrity has visibly taken place in the novel

Reconstruction of Female Identity Through Unattainable Beauty Standards in Zadie Smith's White Teeth

Reconstruction of female identity is one of the important issues in modern times. The majority of the females who descent from the countries of the third world confront lots of problems because of their race and gender. Black females or colored skin females because of the oppression of the white society upon them, try hard to cope with society in order to get some relief and feel that they are part of this cruel white society. One of the solutions for these black females is to reconstruct their identity by mimicry to the English beauty standards. Zadie Smith is a postcolonial author. She deals with third- world women and how they are treated in a minority and in a racist way. She strives to empower the subaltern black females who have African roots. In addition, to change the universal stereotypical dominated image about them. Smith focuses in her novel White Teeth on the marginalized female and how she is treated as shadow in her society. This article shows the impact of beauty standards on the reconstruction of female identity.

MASCULINITY AND IDENTITY IN ZADIE SMITH’S WHITE TEETH

In White Teeth, Zadie Smith portrays the lives of three immigrant families in Britain in the late half of twentieth century. Besides the generally celebrated theme of multiculturalism, this article argues that the novel is an exploration of the relationship between the identity of the second-generation immigrants and their fathers’ masculinity. The lack of masculinity in the fathers among the first-generation immigrants makes the second-generation immigrants cannot construct their British identity, they have to turn to other fatherly fingers for financial and social capital. Through the portrait of masculinity, the author expresses her concern of the racial discrimination against the immigrants and the importance of first-generation immigrants’ masculinity. But on the other hand, the novel’s portrait of men without masculinity intensified the stereotyped negative image of immigrants.

Multiculturalism: Identity, Language and Culture in Zadie Smith's White Teeth

This paper aims at examining the specific meaning of multiculturalism, identity, language and culture in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, her debut novel. Smith depicts a clear picture of the multicultural society of Britain in general and London in particular. However, the paper studies the ways in which Smith’s novel transcends and promotes the limitations of black women. The study investigates how multicultural society of Britain drawn through the role of each character in the novel; therefore, it shows the complex construction of identity created by Smith to illustrate the relationship built by difference of race, language, and religion. The paper also examines how Zadie Smith in her use of language integrates the linguistic process existed in the intercultural experiences of both the characters and the author herself. This paper aims at examining the specific meaning of multiculturalism, identity, language and culture in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, her debut novel. Smith depicts a clear picture of the multicultural society of Britain in general and London in particular. However, the paper studies the ways in which Smith’s novel transcends and promotes the limitations of black women. The study investigates how multicultural society of Britain drawn through the role of each character in the novel; therefore, it shows the complex construction of identity created by Smith to illustrate the relationship built by difference of race, language, and religion. The paper also examines how Zadie Smith in her use of language integrates the linguistic process existed in the intercultural experiences of both the characters and the author herself.This paper aims at examining the specific meaning of multiculturalism, identity, language and culture in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, her debut novel. Smith depicts a clear picture of the multicultural society of Britain in general and London in particular. However, the paper studies the ways in which Smith’s novel transcends and promotes the limitations of black women. The study investigates how multicultural society of Britain drawn through the role of each character in the novel; therefore, it shows the complex construction of identity created by Smith to illustrate the relationship built by difference of race, language, and religion.

Introduction

This introduction to the first of two special issues on “Big, Ambitious Novels by Twenty-First-Century Women” describes the investigation of feminist literary maximalism. A summary and critical response to James Wood's influential negative review of Zadie Smith's White Teeth, the introduction objects to his designation “hysterical realism” to characterize Smith's and other writer's publishing novels in the genre that literary scholarship has called encyclopedic, systems, maximalist, mega, and novels of information. The current debate in literary studies over the methods of postcritique and critique is referenced in order to recommend the issue's articles as models of an intermediate approach: generous reading. Described as an affirmative mode of interpretation that matches the tenor of postcritique, generous reading retains the central importance of critique by attending to the ways in which texts enact critique through the resources of literary form. Generous reading interprets novels as critique. The final section presents summaries of each article's argument about exemplary big, ambitious novels.

“Kill the Monster!”: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters and the Big, Ambitious (Graphic) Novel

In his discussion of the “big, ambitious novel,” James Wood dismisses both male and female authors but singles out Zadie Smith's White Teeth for most of his critique of what he terms “hysterical realism.” For Wood, recent long novels display too much imagination but not enough substance and depth of character; the new novel has become “a picture of life.” With its deliberate foregrounding of inhumanness and spectacularity, Emil Ferris's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters commits many of Wood's list of transgressions against the traditional novel. This article examines how Ferris's book is unaffected by negative reactions to this transgressiveness, championing transgression and ignored voices as the mode of expression best suited to the big, ambitious novel of our times. The book's heroine and purported author of the book touches readers and moves them through the monstrous form she imagines for herself. Her reproductions of comics covers and art works negotiate diverse visual vocabularies and their resulting aesthetic and historical scope. In filtering its story through a young protagonist who is marginalized on all counts (age, class, race, sex, sexual orientation), Ferris's “big, ambitious (graphic) novel” is also a layered response against the criticisms of childishness levied against comics. Transgression in My Favorite Thing Is Monsters becomes a way of rethinking tradition—of comics, of novels, and of graphic novels—in the broader terms of cultural history.