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Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born Sadie Smith in North London in 1975, the daughter of a working-class English father and Jamaican mother. At age fourteen, she changed the first letter of her first name to "Z," purportedly to draw attention to her individuality. Smith attended King's College, Cambridge, where she studied English literature. While a student, she began a manuscript for the novel that would become White Teeth; in a fairy-tale experience, she found a literary agent after submitting little...

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Zadie Smith Essays

White Teeth

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, provides complex characters whose psychology provides insight into the meaning of the novel. Samad Miah Iqbal is one character whose psychosis corresponds with the main theme. He chose to immigrate to England in order...

White Teeth

The search for identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is one of the threads that Smith continually weaves throughout her novel. At one point or another, each character deals with the inevitable question of “Who am I?” From Irie’s search for an...

College

White Teeth

In White Teeth, Zadie Smith develops characters who obsess over preciseness, categorizing, and decisions. This is why Samad’s punishment for making the sole decision to send their son off to Bangladesh is Alsana leaving him in a constant state of...