“白牙”中英国有色移民身份构建之路

1.简介

1.1扎迪•史密斯和白牙
扎迪•史密斯，一个灿烂的牙买加的英国小说家，生于伦敦西北部布伦特原油行政区 - 主要是工薪阶层的面积与种族混合的居民于1975年。她的父亲是英国，而她的母亲是牙买加的，并于1969年移民到英国。她共享一个类似的个人经验，她的小说中的主角。The light brown skin, pitch-black hair and eyes self-evidently tell us that she does notbelong to a pure Anglo-Saxon origin but comes from a race-mixed family. Herrace-mixed background is believed to cast light on her intention of creating White Teeth.There is one thing worth mentioning that she changed her "Sadie" into later "Zadie" (theletter Z looks shaper and more to the point than the original letter S)，which showed hersense of self and fighting. Since childhood，she involved herself in reading and liked towrite what she wanted. Later，http://www.ukthesis.org/ygsslwdx/ she went to Cambridge to study English literatu英re，whereshe presented to the world her first masterpiece— White Teeth. Once the novel went tothe market, the world was astonished by Smith's profound insight about race in thecontemporary changing world. As a third-year college student, she has already shown tothe world her splendid understanding about the multicultural Britain and her greatconcern to the colored immigrants which she is also one member of. Since thepublication of White Teeth，Smith has earned herself a place in the contemporary Englishliterature world. And the novel itself has been included among one of the 100 books bestworth reading by Times.
As a debut to the modem literary world, Smith in this novel has made a vividdescription about immigrants' living condition in contemporary Britain. Zadie Smithherself is race-mixed and resembles one of her characters in her novel. During aninterview at Harward University, when asked “You are half Jamaican, half English. Didyou grow up with the same feeling of cultural dislocation that affects some of yourcharacters。her answer was as follows:

1.2 Literature review 文献综述
The publication of the novel White Teeth immediately caused a great sensation inthe English literary field, even in the whole world. It represents a combination ofethnically, culturally and religiously diverse characters---mainly，Anglo-Jamaican,Bangladeshi and Jewish—adjusting, negotiating and striving a sense of "Britishness" anda sense of belonging in the city of London after WWII. Critical reviews have neverceased to focus on the novel's multiethnic, multiracial and multicultural aspects. Thenovel has been considered as a landmark in the contemporary British literary panorama.In the following parts of this section，some reviews from both home and abroad will bepresented to strength our understanding about the novel and also to certain extent laycertain foundation to this paper.Some critics were most impressed by the youth of Zadie Smith and the quality ofher work. Smith was still an undergraduate student when she was offered a contract byHamish Hamilton to complete the novel after the reading of scarcely the first chapter andshe wrote the rest of it during the senior year at Cambridge University. The mediacompared her work to that of Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi, regarding her as thenew sensation of the millennium. O'Rourke, for example, defines Zadie Smith as "animpressive versatile prose stylist, at ease with a variety of voices and breeds of urbanslang，and in this and in her panoramic approach to multiculturalism she resemblesSalman Rushdie, whose influence is obvious，(O'Rourke 2000:166).#p#分页标题#e#

1.3 Thesis structure dissertation结构
The comments and reviews mentioned above call my attention to the issue ofidentity construction of the colored immigrants in a new era. I am most interested in thisissue and Fd like to make a study of identity construction in this paper.White Teeth has depicted a race-mixed society in the new millennium. Due tounavoidable reasons, in today's multicultural countries, hybridity and the confusion ofcultural identity are key concerns. With more and more immigrants coming to new land,their tradition and heritage result in a multi-racial society, and then cultural diversity.However, along with diverse cultures, there are problems of discrimination, assimilation,social and demographic changes, which not only affected the society itself but the livesof immigrants. While, of the three families, the first two groups (Asian origin andAfro-Caribbean origin) of immigrants were mainly seen as a threat for Britain and,accordingly, a whole discourse on their aliermess was built upon them, encouraging theirexclusion from the concept of Britishness (Solomos 1993; Jackson 1993).

2.1dentity Loss of the First Generation

2.1 Strangers in a strange land
The first generations are mainly made up of people from the Commonwealthcountries which used to be colonized by Britain for a long period of time. That long timeof colonization has not only seen Britain's economical and political controls over them,but also the control in respect to culture. They have been implanted with the dominanceof the white culture. To certain extent, they are familiar with life in Britain.
When theyimmigrate into this new land, they at first thought they could adapt themselves quicklydue to some knowledge of the country and its culture. Nevertheless, life in Britain isbeyond their understanding. They are nobody but strangers and outsiders.Samad Miah Iqbal is one of the first generation immigrants from Bengal. He used toserve in the British Army during WWII. During the war, he built a life-long friendshipwith a white man Archie. He somehow has a strong feeling towards Britain and hemoved to Britain with his wife just after the end of WWII when the British governmentcarried out the policy of free immigration with the aim of rebuilding and reviving theeconomy after the war.

3Jdentity Pursuit of the Second Generation .....................................14
3.1 A pursuit of a pure identity .....................................14
3.1.1 Seeking for a purely white culture..................................... 15
3.1.2 Returning to the traditional culture .....................................16
3.2 Being caught between cultures .....................................19
3.2.1 Cultural dilemma .....................................19
3.2.2 Failure in pursuing a pure identity..................................... 22
4. Construction of a Hybrid Identity .....................................  24#p#分页标题#e#
4.1 Hybrid identity construction .....................................24
4.2 Re-interpretation of Englishness..................................... 27

Conclusion 

Race, or racism, is not the primary concern of the novel, which can be proved by aninterview Smith had had made with BBC: “I wasn't trying to write about race. I wastrying to write down the country I live in." Smith uses her characters to paint a picture ofcolored immigrants living in modern London where race seems to be an unavoidable andinnate component of the multicultural London with long years' colorful immigrationhistory. When Samad finds himself cannot fend off the British influence after twentyyears' stay in Britain, and when Irie goes back to Jamaica with her grandmother to seeher homeland for the first time with a later exclamation that “roots won't matter", asingle-rooted evolved identity is being challenged. The desire to cling tightly to one'sroots or to let them go altogether will be the most irrational and unnatural feeling in thenovel. The novel makes a wonderfully accurate description of what the Willesden Greenstreet views. There are brown strangers making friends with the whites, black strangersinvolving with the browns and the whites in any possible sense whether religious orromantic, and still white men who are strangers. Children of color-mixed are playingmerrily tighter. No one will stop to ask the others where they are from and why they aredifferent from themselves. People just live together and are happy to be together.
As a black British writer, Smith is different from the traditional black writers. Thetraditional black literary works usually have the tendency to focus on the struggle of theblack people，the hostile environment for the marginalized people and the unfairtreatment of the white-dominated society. Smith tries to view the racial problem from aninside perspective, not a marginalized one, despite her ethnic minority background. Infact, Smith adopts a humorous and relaxing tone to narrate her story and presents a realand fresh panorama of a mosaic London to the audience. She is more than familiar withmany years' immigration history. In addition, she keeps an ironic distance from the bitterresentment and confusion generated by the first generation that are treated as strangers ina strange land and eventually left in a state of rootlessness. They are social failures andcan not figure out who they really are and where they are supposed to belong. For thesecond generation, whose living experience is similar to hers, she calmly tells stories oftheir process of self-realization of a hybrid identity in the process of identity construction.Zadie knows and witnessed racial prejudices as well as the painful identity-searching immigrant experience. She never loses hope and promise. The novel begins with aquotation: "What is past is prologue”. This statement sets the thematic mood for thenovel，indicating the intricate relationship between past, present and future. A mood thatthe past is tense and the future perfect is through the novel. Every race will exist in theperfect future.#p#分页标题#e#