Lakhasly

In Zadie Smith's White Teeth, each of the characters have some connection to the "great immigrant experiment" "in the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white" (326). The novel "accommodates conflicting voices" of the members of the two main multicultural families and thereby avoids reducing the discourse on multiculturalism to a homogenous concept (Fernandez, "Exploring Hybridity" 150).Moreover, he emphasizes the setting in the North West London suburbs as "the hybridised metropolitan sites that produce variety and surprise" (171). The 'third space' following the Second World War as Britain becomes multicultural is what makes Archie's and Samad's continued friendship possible and what creates the relationships the novel centers around. Moreover, this 'third space' is what we witness in the setting of multicultural North West London and its various social spaces, most importantly Glenard Oak Comprehensive and O'Connell's, as well as some outdoor spaces. All these settings are what Ribo call 'functional settings': They lay out "space as a multidimensional stage for the development of the plot," so it provides topographical support for "the development of characters or the unfolding of events" (Ribo 39-40).Finding a way to handle these aspects are crucial in order to settle down in a place and to truly belong, in what Pope refers to as "creating a convincing life world" and Siccardi calls 'Becoming', the process of finding one's place in society by "the recovery of one's territory, only with new modalities" (Pope 10; Siccardi 224). Smith's variety of characters enables her to play around with different attitudes and dynamics between characters, making this a novel that studies the human condition, also outside the frame of the postcolonial. Some of the issues that the characters struggle with, are also relevant for others, caught as we all are in between 'globalising influences' and 'personal dispositions' in times of rapid change, as Giddens have argued (1, 3-5). There are, of course, no simple paths to constructing one's identity in 'high modernity' and in the modern, multicultural metropolis. According to Gunning, Smith acknowledges this in the way she avoids any tendencies towards a "simplistic account of human nature" (128).Smith herself has stated about her novel that "I wasn't trying to write about race. I was trying to write about the country I live in" (qtd.in Jones).

In Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, each of the characters have some connection to the “great immigrant experiment” “in the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white” (326). The novel “accommodates conflicting voices” of the members of the two main multicultural families and thereby avoids reducing the discourse on multiculturalism to a homogenous concept (Fernández, “Exploring Hybridity” 150). Smith herself has stated about her novel that “I wasn't trying to write about race. I was trying to write about the country I live in" (qtd. in Jones). She writes about the daily and ‘ordinary’ lives of these diverse types of characters, and in that sense it is true that she does not write specifically about race, or ethnicity. Nevertheless, it is an inescapable fact that almost all of them have an immigrant background, and this part of their identity is one that they need to deal with in some way or other.
One way in which White Teeth can be categorized, is as postcolonial writing. White Teeth certainly deals with issues central to postcolonialism; those of figuring out individual identities in the midst of cultural disruptions and how to reconcile the present with the past (Cuddon 551; Ahmed 11). Finding a way to handle these aspects are crucial in order to settle down in a place and to truly belong, in what Pope refers to as “creating a convincing life world” and Siccardi calls ‘Becoming’, the process of finding one’s place in society by “the recovery of one’s territory, only with new modalities” (Pope 10; Siccardi 224). Smith’s variety of characters enables her to play around with different attitudes and dynamics between characters, making this a novel that studies the human condition, also outside the frame of the postcolonial.
Some of the issues that the characters struggle with, are also relevant for others, caught as we all are in between ‘globalising influences’ and ’personal dispositions’ in times of rapid change, as Giddens have argued (1, 3-5). There are, of course, no simple paths to constructing one’s identity in ‘high modernity’ and in the modern, multicultural metropolis. According to Gunning, Smith acknowledges this in the way she avoids any tendencies towards a “simplistic account of human nature” (128). Furthermore, everyone has to work out their connection to spaces, both past and present, in order to find their identity and to “satisfy the fundamental needs to belong, have a sense of their self and their role in life” (Piazza 11)
Both for persons with immigrant background, but also for those without, the meeting of cultures means that hybrid forms of identity and culture are produced in the ‘third space of enunciation’, according to Bhabha. Though the ‘third space’ might be argued to be an ambivalent space, as Bhabha does, hybrid identities are nevertheless becoming normalized and increasingly seen as “part of the practice of everyday life,” the way Moss sees it (Bhaba 37, 34; Moss 12, 11). Fernández would seem to agree with Moss, as she thinks that White Teeth, by depicting the storylines of immigrants and their children in London, “normalise the experiences of ethnically diverse people (...) and contribute to a hybrid view of British society” (“Third Spaces” 155). Pope might be understood to concur with Moss’s view, too, in how he states that “There is little cultural or ethnic certainty to be found in the novel” (171). Moreover, he emphasizes the setting in the North West London suburbs as “the hybridised metropolitan sites that produce variety and surprise” (171).
The ‘third space’ following the Second World War as Britain becomes multicultural is what makes Archie’s and Samad’s continued friendship possible and what creates the relationships the novel centers around. Moreover, this ‘third space’ is what we witness in the setting of multicultural North West London and its various social spaces, most importantly Glenard Oak Comprehensive and O’Connell’s, as well as some outdoor spaces. All these settings are what Ribó call ‘functional settings’: They lay out “space as a multidimensional stage for the development of the plot,” so it provides topographical support for “the development of characters or the unfolding of events” (Ribó 39-40). The novel does not focus on any character’s arrival in Britain16, rather on their settled status, which allows the novel to centre its attention on how the characters develop their identities in their everyday lives in Willesden (Trimm 148).