From Multicultural to Transcultural: Reading Zadie Smith’sWhite Teeth

Salma Parvin Suma 

Department of English, Bangladesh Army International University of Science and Technology (BAIUST), Cumilla, Bangladesh. 

E-mail: suma.english@baiust.ac.bd

Abstract: Zadie Smith wrote the fantastic debut novel White Teeth, published in 2000, which describes various issues, especially the difference between the immigrated people from different times, cultures, and traditions. Multiculturalism (cultural pluralism) is a
sociological phenomenon in descriptive interpretation (Dewing & Marc, 2006). The intergroup dynamics concept of multiculturalism describes it as a procedure of struggling for support from authorities to achieve particular goals for racial and ethnic minorities (Dewing & Marc, 2006). White Teeth is compared to modern-day London’s cosmopolitan and eclectic population. In the narrative, the ancestry of the first immigrated people and their history have caused identity challenges for the second generation. This paper exposes a theoretical and conceptual investigation of White Teeth from a transcultural point of view in an argument
with multicultural ideology. This study finds the novel’s depictions of the multicultural social space, identity instability, and complex familial relationships are moving toward the transcultural ideology.

Keywords: Multicultural, transcultural, identity, immigrant, familial relationships

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