Post-racial, Post-national Hybridity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth

Abstract

This study analytically discusses what defines people as English in the 21st century by asking as to what creates Englishness in the milieu of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. It also presents the construction or determination of later generation immigrants’ English identities when the limitations of their origins and races are deconstructed. Most importantly, it asks (and tries to answer), whether the second-generation immigrants balance their inherited identities and the ones they choose? The study illustrates by analyzing the events in White Teeth that traditional concepts of identity and the belief that family roots and race alone create a solid base for the children’s identity, are nothing but a fallacy. The novel shows that the factors of nationality, culture, and race are fluid and that they do not provide an airtight framework for the construction of a person’s identity.