Orientalism in White Teeth by Zadie Smith, appears to have typical stereotypes. I have just started the book (I need to get my blog up early because I wont be near a computer!) and there are already references to a Indian boy who is being abused by the restaurant staff. “Get-your-fat-Ganesh-Hindu-backside-up-there-Elephant-boy”, what is that! Being Hindu myself, I have to say I was a tad offended at this. But again it accurately represents the Orientalism in that the “derogatory” terms used to speak to this boy are really what I feel most “Western Societies” associate with the Hindu culture. All this was missing was a reference to Gandhi. What I have gotten from the Said article is basically the views of “Americanized” cultures on basically any other culture to the East, seemingly leaving out European cultures.
Postcolonalism seems to be similar to Orientalism in that it is a division of cultures. When Clara meets Archie we learn that she has a past, as she give up her religion to be with Archie, she leaves behind much more. We can see a “postcolonalism” view from Smith’s character that Clara is changing and straying away from the “normal” way of her life. As she meets Archie she abandons much of her old ways.
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The racial stereotypes in White Teeth are prevalent to the point of absurdity, in which derogatory terms are used from cultures that share little more than the same hemisphere with the intended target. We see this in the flashback to World War II in which one of the men refers to Samad as 'Sultan'. Samad replies that, "I wouldn't mind the epithet, Mr. Mackintosh, if it were at least accurate. It's not historically accurate, you know. It is not, even geographically speaking, accurate."(73) Samad represents the colonized man who has become a blur of all the other colonized men throughout the world.
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