Fundamental Differences in Zadie Smith's White Teeth
9/11 has initiated a shift in cultural studies by foregrounding religious identity as a primary manifestation of difference between the East and the West. Focusing on Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, this paper problematizes religion as a form of identification that surpasses the other traditional components of identity (race, class, gender, and nationalism). Smith explores the way religion unites the marginalized Muslims living in Britain who are systematically ostracized from the center. Focusing on the lives of two British families living in London--Archibald and his Jamaican wife Clara, along with Bengali-Muslim Samad and Alsana--Smith examines the role of religion in the migrant’s efforts to integrate to the national sphere. The two families are a study in contrast. Archibald and Clara’s relationship suggests that cultural differences are not obstacles within their cosmopolitan, postcolonial setting. Samad and Alsana, on the other hand, who differ from their society not culturally but in their religion, have far greater difficulty negotiating between family and national identity. And while Archibald and Samad have had a life-long friendship, Samad’s more religious children find multicultural friendship a much more difficult and complex thing.
This paper will first of all explore the difference between the way the two generations align themselves with national ideologies: the sense of duty that once inspired Archibald and Samad to serve in the British military during the World War II is no longer relevant to the younger generations who identify themselves less with national values and more with religious sentiment. Second, by focusing on Samad’s twins, Millat and Magid, I will analyze the effects of Islamization on British nationalism. Millat’s involvement with a fundamentalist group causes severe alienation from England, while Magid who is sent to “back home” to Bangladesh becomes an Anglophile. Through this irony, Smith seems to suggest that geographical estrangement is secondary to religious identification: Millat in England becomes invested in the idea of a Muslim brotherhood to satisfy his sense of belonging, while Magid’s exile in Bangladesh sees him become a free thinker who denounces faith and fatalism.
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