Ethnic Identity In Zadie Smith's 'White Teeth'

Identity formation and acceptance is a difficult task that each person goes through at some point in their life. Irie Jones, a central character in the novel White Teeth, is the biracial child of a white English man and a black Jamaican woman. Growing up, Irie not only has to face puberty but she also faces a coexisting identity crisis. Irie lives in a world of white, a world she feels that she does not belong to. Much of Irie’s identity is formed around her race and ethnicity. Author Zadie Smith uses the metaphors of teeth, hair, body figure, and roots throughout White Teeth to symbolize Irie’s inner conflict with and denial of her ethnic identity. Riding on the vehicles of metaphors and symbols, Smith takes us through a remarkable journey of an average girl’s struggle to accept her ethnicity and ultimately find a place she can call home within herself.

Through her search for her identity, Irie fears that she does not fit the traditional white beauty standards of England. Across cultures, the desire for light skin and a westernized appearance seems to be universal (Ramsey and Harcourt 205). Irie, as well as most people, views beauty through the lens of her ethnic features. Being biracial and living in England, her Jamaican physical characteristics stand out. Although Irie is a mix of both black and white; her shapely figure, skin color, and curly afro make her more visibly recognizable as a person of the black heritage. When a person is biracial “There is a sense of being ‘both yet neither’. At this stage…ambivalence usually takes the form of white preference and black rejection…” (Harris, Howard, and Ezra 80). As one might imagine, it seems like a difficult task to embrace half of a person’s racial background while rejecting t...

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...ith accepting her identity, she reaches a resolution by the end of White Teeth. Zadie Smith lets us witness a glimpse of Irie’s self-acceptance independent from issues of race and ethnicity. The self-realization comes when she is pregnant and soon to be a mother herself, she must face an extraordinary uncertainty: the identity of the father of her child. Going from a failed attempt at looking for herself in her mother, she finds her true self in her own motherhood. Having her own child finally helps Irie to accept herself and to focus on something else besides recognition from other people. Her absolute love for her child is the way Irie’s situation comes to a full circle. In motherhood, she finds a new way to define herself, independent of others. The importance of Irie’s relationship with her daughter is what helps her achieve a sense of belonging in England.