The Literature Book

324

EVERY MOMENT HAPPENS

TWICE: INSIDE AND

OUTSIDE AND THEY ARE

TWO DIFFERENT HISTORIES

WHITE TEETH (2000), ZADIE SMITH

I

mmigration has been a major

part of the cultural fabric of the

US, Canada, and the UK for

generations, but recent decades

have seen a surge of new writing

that reflects both the diversity of

their populations and the ubiquity

of English. The need to assimilate

into a new culture tends to suppress

migrant voices, so it is often the

second generation in immigrant

families who are strongly motivated

to write stories that reflect the

fusion of their cultures. This in part

explains the slower emergence of

multicultural writing in the rest

of Europe and around the world,

but as other nations become more

diverse, new voices start to be

heard. In Germany, for instance,

Renan Demirkan has paved the

way for Turkish-German writing.

In the UK, multicultural

literature goes back to major

waves of immigration from the

Commonwealth in the 1950s, and

often brings a troubled, xenophobic

space into sharp focus, revealing

the lives of people of multiple

ethnic groups in major cities. As

elsewhere, many mixed-race and

second-generation immigrant

authors penned first novels that

dwell on the integration of diaspora

communities. Zadie Smith’s award-

winning book White Teeth offers a

fresh, youthful perspective on the

complex inheritance of multicultural

families in North London.

Melting-pot Britain

White Teeth stretches back to the

last days of World War II, when the

English white working-class Archie

Jones is paired with a Bangladeshi

Muslim radio engineer named

Samad Iqbal in a British Army

tank unit in Greece. The friendship,

crossing class and color lines,

continues after the war. The bond

is cemented by long afternoons

in an Arab-run Irish pub, marital

discord, and late-in-life fatherhood

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Multiculturalism

BEFORE

1979 A Black Power group

takes over the basement in

Moses Ascending, Trinidadian-

born Sam Selvon’s tales of a

West Indian landlord in London.

1987 Michael Ondaatje, a Sri

Lankan-born Canadian writer,

weaves native cultures into

rich storytelling about the

lives of immigrant laborers in

Toronto in In the Skin of a Lion.

1991 Renan Demirkan’s

semiautobiographical account

of conflicting loyalties in a

Turkish family in Germany,

Schwarzer Tee mit drei Stuck

Zucker (“Black Tea with Three

Sugars”), becomes a best seller.

AFTER

2004 Small Island, English

author Andrea Levy’s story

of the lives of two couples,

sheds light on the migrant

experience in postwar Britain.

Do you think anybody is

English? Real ly English?

It’s a fairy-tale!

White Teeth

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