Cultural Hybridity In Zadie Smith’s White Teeth And On Beauty

Abstract

Cultural diversity depicts multiplicity and the fusion of the cultures of the people in the existing mass population and it occurs at the settlement of people from one place to another in the aftermath of colonization. The social and cultural collaboration of the countries features the rise of the term ‘Multiculturalism’ means living together in different cultural communities in any society and trying to construct a mutual life although still holding a sense of its unique identity. In any society, ‘cultural hybridity’ refers to a wide range of effects that are a result of cultural interchange and fusion, including self-identity, lifestyle, language, tradition, music, custom, knowledge, and belief. In general, Wisker (2006) states hybridity as, “new mixes of linguistic, cultural, political and racial beliefs and forms” (190). This article focuses on White Teeth, and On Beauty by Zadie Smith, which reveals the concept of hybridization as a natural consequence of integration in which the character’s oppression, in-betweenness and identity crisis undergone as a result of the dilemma between the social and cultural values, discriminatiory attitudes of the environment in which they dwell. The outcome would justify the problematic concepts of integration, identity crisis and cultural hybridity through the analysis of the characters and cultural elements of the select novels of Zadie Smith.