After the Century of Strangers: Hospitality and Crashing in Zadie Smith’sWhite Teeth

New poetics of postcolonial relations: global genetic kinship in Zadie Smith’sWhite Teethand Amitav Ghosh’sThe Calcutta Chromosome

“…Ryan Trimm goes as far as stating that 'Smith's novel uses the family as a miniature of the nation'. 36 Smith, however, not only draws on the family to depict its importance for its particular members. She dramatises the characters' conflicted postcolonial identities through the interaction of the novel's three central families, the British-Jamaican Joneses (Archie, Clara and Irie), the Bangladeshi Iqbals (Samad, his wife Alsana and their sons Millat and Magid) and the wealthier middle-class Chalfens.…”

How Much Does Literature Weigh? On Taste, Waste, Value, And The Canon

“…2 While I can't reproduce every possible reference to the canon, it can be and has been variously described as: an ongoing process, a set of conventions, a library, a museum, a mausoleum, a group of people, a series of institutions, a series of value judgements both overt and covert, a system made out of individuals, a gestalt, a ghost or spectre haunting Western civilization, a garbage dump, a conversation, a conversation about itself, a system with lots of moving parts and variables as well as interactions with other systems and thus other sets of variables, either a monstrosity or the only thing preventing monstrosities depending on who you ask, culturally foundational or influential texts, a tradition internalized and/or externalized, the idols of Western culture and its acolytes, an aggregation of personal valuations by people who are themselves influential, texts that are central instead of marginal, a list of criteria or qualities, a form of myopia; an obligation, an ought rather than an is, a set of practices more so than an entity, an act or series of acts of categorization, an idea mostly, an anthology, a response to widespread personal and cultural anxieties, a curriculum. Howe (1991/2015), and Harold Bloom (1973/1997, among others...and range from...organizing texts in an academic field to preserving cultural struggles and serving as models and inspiration for future writers" (16). This common set of justifications for the canon's existence has even led some to try and pin down its exact contents.…”

How Much Does Literature Weigh? On Taste, Waste, Value, And The Canon

“…2 While I can't reproduce every possible reference to the canon, it can be and has been variously described as: an ongoing process, a set of conventions, a library, a museum, a mausoleum, a group of people, a series of institutions, a series of value judgements both overt and covert, a system made out of individuals, a gestalt, a ghost or spectre haunting Western civilization, a garbage dump, a conversation, a conversation about itself, a system with lots of moving parts and variables as well as interactions with other systems and thus other sets of variables, either a monstrosity or the only thing preventing monstrosities depending on who you ask, culturally foundational or influential texts, a tradition internalized and/or externalized, the idols of Western culture and its acolytes, an aggregation of personal valuations by people who are themselves influential, texts that are central instead of marginal, a list of criteria or qualities, a form of myopia; an obligation, an ought rather than an is, a set of practices more so than an entity, an act or series of acts of categorization, an idea mostly, an anthology, a response to widespread personal and cultural anxieties, a curriculum. Howe (1991/2015), and Harold Bloom (1973/1997, among others...and range from...organizing texts in an academic field to preserving cultural struggles and serving as models and inspiration for future writers" (16). This common set of justifications for the canon's existence has even led some to try and pin down its exact contents.…”