Zadie Smith\'s Writing Style Zadie

Zadie Smith's Writing Style

Zadie Smith[footnoteRef:1] [1: (Inspirational Black Literature)]

White Teeth

Themes in Smith's Work

Smith's Writing Process

Zadie Smith is a British author who has a unique writing style which often takes on issues such as racial awareness and multiculturalism. Her mother was Jamaican and her father was British and it is reasonable to believe that she was heavily influenced by racial issues as a result of her parents and the fact that she grew up in a multiethnic neighborhood in London. She has worked hard to be different and create her own style. She does so by incorporating themes that are not often included in different writings and does so well. This analysis will give an overview of White Teeth, Zadie's first breakthrough novel, as well as provide some of the reasons that make Zadie Smith's work unique.

White Teeth

Zadie Smith's first and award winning novel was White Teeth, which she wrote at Cambridge during her undergraduate years[footnoteRef:2]. In the book she writes about a variety of themes from ethnic, familial, cultural, historical, and etymological. The story centers on the history and lives of two families, the Joneses and the Iqbals. Archie Jones is British and meets Bengali Samad Iqbal, who is Muslim, when they are soldiers in World War II. The two characters have their lives intersect with an incident with a Nazi scientist. Their friendship grew and the two characters formed a deep bond. Later the two characters have their lives even more intertwined when their children unite to join branches of the family trees. Yet the marriage is not lasting. [2: (Inspirational Black Literature)]

After the marriage failed first marriage, Archie is devastated to the point of contemplating suicide. However, later Archie marries Clara, a young Jamaican woman who has had many of her knocked out. Clara is the granddaughter of Ambrosia, a Jamaican beauty who was seduced by a British soldier. Clara deviates from her grandmother and her mother by not accepting their religious faith. Clara separates herself from family, from her childhood, and from her culture; like the teeth knocked from her mouth when she was a girl.

Archie and Clara's have a daughter which they name Irie Ambrosia. She is like her grandmother Hortense because she was born of a British father and a Jamaican mother. Irie has inherited her mother's protruding teeth, the one's that she had knocked out when she was a child; however she is unaware of this shared trait. Clara never told her daughter that her straight and perfect teeth are not her real teeth. Later, in a comedic scene, Irie knocks over a glass holding her mother's dentures and Irie is literally bit in the foot. The resulting epiphany is Irie's realization that she doesn't know much about her true heritage, and she is determined to unearth her real roots.

Smith demonstrates how important teeth are to one's identity; especially to a marginalized person such as Clara. The teeth are something of a focal point in the story. Clara's loss of her front teeth plays a role is something that has defined her and is a necessary ingredient in order to understand who Clara is. Although she desperately tries to redefine herself in a plethora of ways, there are many things that she cannot change such as her life prior to her meeting Archie. This is also a metaphor for the way in which Britain has a history of oppressing people of color.

III. Themes in Smith's Work

In fiction it is difficult to find a new style that has not been already tried. it's hard to find new styles, and new rhythms, and new ways of structuring a narrative that keeps the reader engaged, and the reading experience fresh[footnoteRef:3]. In her new novel, NW, Zadie Smith has a go. She writes, in singing, soaring, street-savvy prose, about a corner of North West London, and the people who call it home[footnoteRef:4]. This book has many of the same themes that you can find in Zadie's other works such as White Teeth. The major themes that Zadie likes to incorporate in her works are[footnoteRef:5]: [3: (Patterson)] [4: Ibid. ] [5: (Isbister)]

identity and nationality miscegenation racial discrimination gender politics history religion tradition and assimilation

IV. Smith's Writing Process

The Guardian reached out to many authors in 2010 and asked them to offer a set of their own rules for writing[footnoteRef:6]. She created an interesting set of rules: [6: (Popova)]

1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

3. Don't romanticise your 'vocation'. You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle'. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.

5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.

7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the -internet.

8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

9. Don't confuse honours with achievement.

10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand -- but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never -being satisfied.

Smith says she spends 80% of her efforts on the first 50 or 60 pages of a book -- and the rest comes "pretty quickly." She says she does that to get the tone -- the perspective -- the way she wants it[footnoteRef:7]. She is also focused on trying to write something different and makes that one of her priorities. She does not worry about being productive, rather she only writes when she feels inspired to do so. [7: (Field)]