Zadie Smith and the Quest for Identity

Roland Barthes claims that. "The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture"(146). As a woman born to an English father and a Jamaican mother, Zadie Smith was brought up to see the world from the eyes of both the dominant culture as well as that of the oppressed. Being of English descent she is part of a culture that became legendary for its domination of other cultures that it deemed inferior. But as the daughter of a Jamaican woman she is also part of a culture that has been oppressed by the English. Lastly, as a woman she is oppressed once again by the old world ways of white English men. We see this in the Showalter essay with the quote, "I consider women's literature as a specific category, not because of biology, but because it is, in a sense, the literature of the oppressed". All these issues are at play within White Teeth because they are all in play within the author herself. In this way I disagree with the Barthes idea that "it is language which speaks, not the author"(143) because so much of this author's struggle for identity is what is allowing that language to speak.