Post Colonization and White Teeth

The essays, "Post Colonialism: The Empire Writes Back" and "Crisis in Orientalism" discuss postcolonial theory as related to literature. These works are related to White Teeth because their themes of postcolonial and orientalist theory are played out in its text. This is both an interesting and dissapointing finding in such a humorous and clever book. The first time postcolonialist theory and the prejudice that it speaks of rears its ugly head is in the scene in which Archie meets Sarah. He comments that she is "beautiful in all senses except, maybe, by virtue of being black." (Smith, P. 15) The view that British colonialists had that regarded Africans as inferior beings plays itself out in this scene. Such a scene can remind someone of the racist views of such colonialist works as Kipling's White Man's Burden.