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Journal of Postcolonial Writing

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SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Sara Upstone Published online: 30 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Sara Upstone (2007): SAME OLD, SAME OLD, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 43:3, 336-349 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449850701669666

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Sara Upstone
SAME OLD, SAME OLD Zadie Smiths White Teeth and Monica Alis Brick Lane1
s.upstone@kingston.ac.uk Journal 10.1080/17449850701669666 RJPW_A_266809.sgm 1744-9855 Original Taylor 2007 0 3 43 SaraUpstone 00000December and & of Article Francis Postcolonial (print)/1744-9863 Francis2007 Writing (online)

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Close examination of White Teeth and Brick Lane illustrates why postcolonial frameworks continue to be relevant when discussing black British literature. To differing degrees, both these novels maintain postcolonial contexts in their representation of British-born black and Asian individuals, even as they express the confidence of this new generation. This paper addresses how the tensions between British-born confidence and familiar tropes of migrant alienation may call into question readings of these novels that emphasize their uniqueness and positivity. Keywords confidence Black British; Monica Ali; Zadie Smith; postcolonial; identity;

But times have changed and the children of the earlier generation, born in England, many to bi-racial parents, do not carry the ship comfortably on their heads. They are introducing something of a dilemma in the British literary scene because they are often either unwilling to or incapable of wearing that ship that points to a migrant identity or an identity of otherness. (Dawes 258) In engaging with the cultural complexities of contemporary Britain, Zadie Smiths White Teeth and Monica Alis Brick Lane are 21st-century novels that have been heralded as representative of the glorious future of black British fiction, 2 and of the reality of contemporary urban Britain which Dawes gestures towards in the above epigraph.3 Both Smith and Ali were named in Grantas 20 best young British writers (2003). White Teeth, an Observer review contends, offers a very optimistic vision [ ] racist violence is only mentioned briefly and at second hand (Merritt np). Equally, Brick Lane presents both a gripping story and an exploration of a community that is so quintessentially British that it has given us our national dish (Bedell np). There is a sense that such narratives represent a shift from earlier migrant fiction and postcolonial theoretical frameworks.4 Rather than alienation, these novels are seen to offer self-assurance, dwelling rather than diaspora, and a new hybridity less about being in-between cultures and more about the fact that culture is now, in essence, inbetween. Yet on a number of levels, Smith and Alis departures from earlier migrant fiction are less notable than much criticism implies. Rather, both Brick Lane and White Teeth can be seen as largely contiguous with existing migrant narratives. Whilst this continuity is
Journal of Postcolonial Writing Vol. 43, No. 3 December 2007, pp. 336349 ISSN 1744-9855 print/ISSN 1744-9863 online 2007 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/17449850701669666

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a significant feature of black British fictions engagement with migrant heritage, it also raises the question of whether such novels deserve their characterization as dynamic 21st-century departures. Moreover, it interrogates any simplistic distinction between migrant and later black British writing. To differing degrees, both writers appear to be caught in a migrant past. This past is rooted not in black British culture but in the contexts of postcolonial theory, at times at odds with the 21st-century British voice they are identified as representing. In both texts there exists a denied tension, between the confidence of what will be referred to here as a British-born ethnic generation, and a migrant past that, perhaps unnecessarily, still holds sway over the voices of this recent generation. Such inconsistencies hold great significance for how we read British ethnic fiction. For whilst, in Dawess terms (258), some writers may no longer be wearing the ship, others seem unwilling to adopt a new mode of attire.
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I will go back home: (re)writing migrancy (Ali, Brick Lane 26)

Both novels repeat the tone of earlier texts, despite their later setting. In Brick Lane, conventional dislocation, echoing Sam Selvons The Lonely Londoners, George Lammings The Emigrants and V.S. Naipauls The Mimic Men, characterizes migrant experience. 5 This is marked by metaphors employed by the migrant protagonist Nazneen which, with references to sadhus and muezzins (Ali, Brick Lane 13, 43), belong to a larger strategy of connecting to the past in order to secure emotional survival. Equally, Nazneens husband Chanu is a master of Fanonian contradictions: self-hatred combined with a Going Home Syndrome means he strives to return to Bangladesh, yet he does not pray and he drinks alcohol because back home if you drink you risk being an outcast. In London, if you dont drink you risk the same thing (90). Like Naipauls Ralph Singh, Chanu mimics the Englishman, even as he suffers his racism. Smiths Samad also represents a classic migrant experience: the narrative of a man whose ambitions and qualities go unrecognized by the British. Described acerbically by his wife Alsana as the traditionalist (53), Samad is equally, if not more, fearful of western culture than Chanu. In 1984, just a year before the opening date of Brick Lane, he declares: I have been corrupted by England, I see that nowmy children, my wife, they too have been corrupted (125). And although Alsana may seem more confident than Nazneen, she shows similar exclusionary attitudes: for Alsana, the children of her friends Archie and Clara are half blacky-white (53). In both novels, the majority of migrant characters are not really settling, and when they are, this does not mean easy acceptance of cultural hybridity. This reflects the split which Mark Stein sees in black British literature, between the locations of residence and of belonging (69, 95). As narratives sweep from the 1970s and 1980s to the present day, one might expect some progress. Yet both novels are largely static in this respect, neglecting improvements in race relations, and representing migrants as incapable of stimulating change. The bleak environment of Brick Lane, where the fact that its a Tower Hamlets official statistic: three point five Bangladeshis to one room (39) in 1985 becomes four or five in Chanus estimation by 2001 (273) reinforces James Procters description of Britain as a stable bland monolith (1). While there has been economic change between 1985 and 2001, Nazneen as an individual still feels placeless.

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Similarly in White Teeth, as late as 1990, Samad describes Britain as a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated [ ] you belong nowhere (349): the presence of a multicultural community as early as the 1970s (18) does not alleviate this feeling of being outside mainstream society. In 1984 and 1989 we find overt racism (174, 199). In 1990, this is replaced with the ignorance of middle-class white culture, as represented by the Chalfen family. The format may have changed, but prejudice remains. Whilst Willesden is seen as diverse in comparison to East London where the characters initially settle, this makes little tangible difference: No one was more liberal than anyone else anywhere anyway. It was only that here, in Willesden, there was just not enough of any one thing to gang up against any other thing and send it running to the cellars while windows were smashed. (54)
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This lack of progress is one context in which to consider representations of British-born characters.

This is my country: British-born confidence (Ali, Brick Lane 175)

The sense that reality for the migrant shifts little over time, whether within the novels or in comparison with earlier migrant texts, is deflating when contextualized within the history of British race relations, and undercuts British-born 21st-century reality. Samads alienation in White Teeth, partly because your children are unrecognizable (349), suggests circumstances should be more positive for the British-born generation. Yet both writers present tensions unconcerned with positive generational change, which are instead preoccupied with the past, indicating a retreat back to worn-out categories (Nasta 11). Superficially, both writers do make assertions of British-born confidence. In Brick Lane, Nazneens daughter Shahana is a model of British-Asian identity, illustrated in details such as sandwiches of cream cheese spread with mango pickle (411). Despite Nazneens isolation and Chanus emphasis on respectable Bangladeshi values, Shahana is connected to a global street culture rather than a diasporic consciousness: Shahana did not want to listen to Bengali classical music. Her written Bengali was shocking. She wanted to wear jeans. She hated her kameez and spoiled her entire wardrobe by pouring paint on them. If she could choose between baked beans and dal it was no contest [ ] Shahana did not care. Shahana did not want to go back home. (147) In the rejection of home there is a clear distinction between the migrant discourse of return andin Steins termsa new conjunction of belonging and residence in the same location. This new identity is encapsulated in one sentence: We go on the Internet at school, said Shahana, in English (164). Shahanas declaration at once emphasizes her global culture, her British identity in language, and her commitment to the future. Karim, Nazneens young lover, is also a confident British-born model, strongly identified with both East London and a definite Muslim identity. His speech defect defies

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stereotypical construction, challenging the desire to categorize British-born experience in familiar migrant frameworks. Nazneen initially believes that when he spoke in Bengali he stammered. In English he found his voice and it gave him no trouble (173). Yet Karim points out that he stammers in both English and Bengali (379). Nazneen constructs Karim as the typical dislocated youth, alienated from his home by the migratory experience. Yet to place a conventional postcolonial reading on Karim, the novel indicates, is to fall into the trap of enforcing inappropriate cultural stereotypes. Karims generation also offers a new model of defiance. When Nazneen went out, she would walk a step behind (73), whereas Shahana walked on in front (219). Equally, the youths who attend Karims meetings are committed to Islam, but, more significantly, are evidence of a specific, essentially hybrid, London identity. Local allegiances may be violent, but they mark the British-Asians right to belong. Similar to the defiance of black Britons in the 1980s, this Asian generation replaces migrant acceptance with resistance. As Chanu notes, We always kept quiet [ ] The young ones dont want to keep quiet anymore (213). Their confidence allows subversion and reclamation: Someone had written in careful flowing silver spray over the wall, Pakis. And someone else, in less beautiful but confident black letters, had added, Rule (194). Similarly in White Teeth, past racist language has lost its power; its audience has been eroded: If you ask me, said one disgruntled OAP to another, they should all go back to their own But this, the oldest sentence in the world, found itself stifled by the ringing of bells and the stamping of feet, until it retreated under the seats with the chewing gum. (142) The exuberant public defiance of Millat, Magid and Irie undercuts any sense they are uncomfortable in their everyday lives. Cutting short the OAPs comments not only demonstrates the growing unacceptability of public racism but also draws conscious attention to the different status of this new generation: the children are already in their own country. In defiance of this racism, Millat and Magid are involved in a process of taxing something, whereby one lays claim, like a newly arrived colonizer, to items in a street that do not belong to you (145). In specific reference to colonialism, Smith asks us to accept the childrens actions as a subversive reversal of colonial authority: a writing back resonant with earlier postcolonial positions. Yet I would suggest that the children reveal a very different dynamic. In claiming the ephemeralsuch as BMX bikesthey are free from the migrants need to assert claims over more permanent public structures. Without anxieties about residence, they do not claim the city itself, because they are already at ease within it. Indeed, in an uncharacteristically short sentence, standing defiantly at the beginning of a paragraph, we are told: Now, the children knew the city (151). In this sense, like Shahana, Smiths children embody confident identities. Magids claim Ive got to go to school. I dont have time to go to Mecca (132), suggests British rather than Bangladeshi priorities. The difficulty Millat has purging himself of the West (381), unable to prevent lines from Goodfellas contaminating his religious ideals (382), stresses a fusion of influences, which cannot be dismissed with an easy return to roots. You are black British whether or not you want to be. The reality of such an existence

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cannot be defined by any diaspora, by a mythical homeland, or by white racism, but must instead be offered its own unique mode of belonging, affirming Stuart Halls assertion that Black British culture is today confident beyond its own measure in its own identity (Frontlines 127, my emphasis).

They cannot escape their history: maintaining migrancy (Smith, White Teeth 399)
In her essay on White Teeth, Molly Thompson, against general readings that stress positive experience, argues that the novel presents fragmentation and uncertainty that aligns Smith with many postcolonial critics and theorists (123). For Thompson, there is no tension between such positioning and Smiths unique black British voice. By contrast I want to argue that both White Teeth and Brick Lane, in blurring distinctions between British-born confidence and migrant experience, work within a postcolonial frame of reference that does disrupt the British-born protagonists specific, dynamic identities. Both novels represent social mixing negatively. Samads fear about Millats passion for obscenities and a noisy TV show about an A-team is not represented as generalized parental anxiety but as the specific fears of a migrant, as Samad asks: What was the country doing to his sons, he wanted to know, what was it doing? (156). Here assimilation becomes corruption (165). This is reinforced in Brick Lane, where Tariqs downfall through drug abuse is associated with moving outside the community. What is being copied by involvement in Londons diverse community is going to the pubs, to nightclubs (Ali, Brick Lane 23) and when the Bengali wives meet they note only interracial dating and alcohol problems (38). Such negativity is neither confined to certain sections of the population nor stressed as subjectively experienced. For whilst Chanu leads the attack against English schools, it is the authoritative voice of a medical professional, Dr Azad, who reveals growing heroin abuse in the Bangladeshi community (20405). Moreover, in both texts, British-born confidence is ultimately interrogated. In White Teeth that Millat was neither one thing nor the other, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between (30203) supports Bhabhas principles of both hybridity and its abstract theoretical locationThird Space (3638) rather than assertions of a writer like Hall, for whom such fusion must be physically located within the concrete allegiances of ethnic communities: Hall acknowledges that artists speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular experience, out of a particular culture (New Ethnicities 272). Despite Iries confidence, she is a stranger in a strange land with a feeling of wrongness (Smith, White Teeth 230, 232). Millats status as social chameleon does not mark a new way of belonging, but instead signifies alienation and transcultural wandering: underneath it all, there remained an ever present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere (233). Smith, perhaps, is conscious of these tensions. Iries discovery of her Jamaican roots is described as laying claim to the past [ ] where she came from [ ] her birthright (343), relocating Irie as a child of the Caribbean diaspora. Yet the narrative goes on to acknowledge homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language

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(345). Smiths universalizing and adoption of the postcolonial concept of imaginary nationhood, however, means her British-born characters can be no more British than they can be from anywhere else. Nowhere is this preoccupation more notable than in Chapter 17. Here, discussing the twins, the narrative declares immigrants [ ] are resourceful; they make do (398). This is undoubtedly an important statement of migrant tenacity in the face of hardship, but it is also part of the discourse that constructs this hardship. The twins are not immigrants. Yet Smiths language betrays an ingrained association with past discourses rooted in postcolonial theory. Irie is described in similar terms: a nerd-immigrant (256), whilst those related to Glenard are three generations of immigrants (265). The discourse that constructs these characters as outsiders is in fact the narratives own: the fact that the brothers will express their past [ ] Because this is the other thing about immigrants [ ] they cannot escape their history (399). This rhetorical language, in particular, illustrates a re-creation of the spirit of Rushdiesque migrant narratives, not just as homage but extending to derivativeness. The comment we have been here before (140) is used as a leitmotif by Rushdie in The Ground beneath her Feet, published only a year before White Teeth. There is repetition here of Rushdies tendency to characterize all migrants as itinerant wanderers, but for Smith not only migrants but their children, too, are going round and round. In deference to postmodernity, belonging is made both the Holy Grail, andparadoxicallythe impossibility which the narrative cannot unfashionably offer with any resolution. This is reinforced by epigraphs, most notably the novels main epigraph, what is past is prologue, but also, subsequently, Tebbits cricket test and its insinuations of looking back (Smith, White Teeth 107).6 The term second-generation is employed throughout the novel (298, 433). Here Smith seemingly falls prey to the inappropriate language of theoretical discussions of ethnic literature. In his study of black London, Sukhdev Sandhu refers, for example, to Hanif Kureshis audiences as second-generation Asians (231) (which presumably doesnt mean that their grandparents werent Asian), and then goes on to explore what he terms second-generation immigrants (274), and British-born Londoners who are described as second-generation migrants (284), even though they have travelled nowhere. In Britain in 2005, this description of British-born identity implies disassociation and denies a shift in experience. Equally, even Stein, who proposes a new model of confidence in black British writing, reverts to tropes of movement in terms of novels better suited to a politics of locationdisputing his own thesis with a return to postcolonial frames of reference such as the erosion of the notion of borders (43). 7 Such descriptions may take new forms: be it Steins use of the postethnic, or Humayun Ansaris enculturation (205). Yet they do less than perhaps they might to move away from postmodern motifs. This is even the case for critics who profess a desire to move outside such frameworks: despite presenting in Home Truths intelligent criticisms of both third space and hybridity, for example, and an expressed desire to frame Asian literature in more original terms, Susheila Nasta nevertheless declares that the conceptual parameters of a diaspora space are lived not only by migrants or their descendants but also by the supposedly indigenous (8). What Smith therefore betrays is a wider trend whereby notions of fluid, multiplicitous identity in descriptions of the British-born experience continue to be exploited. This is despite the fact that, as Procter illustrates (12), such definitions do not accurately represent migrants, let alone their children.

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Such highly emotive, sweeping language conflicts with the generational difference in Smiths narrative. Smith moves from a critique of the backward-looking, the awareness of fathers who dealt in the present to: This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment (281). Equally, best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it bestless trouble) represent not positive hybridity but immigrant fears of dissolution, disappearance (282). In terms of Brick Lane, too, British-born confidence is undermined. Karims status as one who has a place in the world (218) is revealed as a fiction and replaced with a final judgement of him as born a foreigner (375), beholden to the reality of his parents. Such tensions can be more productively revealed by the migrant women in each novel. Alsana may be more confident than Nazneen, but her fear of inter-racial relationships makes her unwilling to accept the cross-cultural fusion her children represent. Equally, the character of Razia Iqbal offers a potential alternative. With Union Jack top over salwaar pants (Ali, Brick Lane 188), Razia is a physical symbol of the possibility of British-Asian identity. With a drug addict son but a daughter going to university, she offers a more realistic view of the cross-cultural community, and a more positive, if brutal, alternative to the discourse of dislocation: Assimilation this, alienation that! Let me tell you a few simple facts. Fact: we live in a Western society. Fact: our children will act more and more like Westerners. Fact: thats no bad thing. My daughter is free to come and go. Do I wish I had enjoyed myself like her when I was young? Yes! (93) And yet Razia is a perfect example of cultural tensions because, despite scepticism about traditional thinking, and her Union Jack jumper, she still declares that her daughter will make a love marriage over my dead body (40). In both novels, what is presented negatively in the experience of the British born could equally be reversed: for example, the cultural fusion that Karim sees as lost identity could also be seen as a celebration of British youths diverse influences: When I was a little kid [ ] If you wanted to be cool you had to be something elsea bit white, a bit black, a bit something. Even when it all took off, bhangra and all that, it was Punjabi, Pakistani, giving it all the attitude. It werent us, was it? (217) To be proud of your identity is to be proud of all these cultural influences. Yet Karim sees them as preventing a coterminous pride in Bangladeshi culture and bemoans the lack of interest shown by the dissolute youth (215)who are no longer willing to fight for religion. The fact that young people are not being chased home as Karim was, and dont remember how it used to be indicates greater intolerance towards racism, a mark of Karims resistance having its intended result. Yet Karim cannot see that his communitys lack of awareness of racism is the most significant marker of a changed society. Similarly, in White Teeth, what Millatand not just Millat but all the childrenembody is interpreted as trouble, as parents ask what was wrong with all the children, what had gone wrong with these first descendants of the great ocean-crossing

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experiment? (189). Yet what is wrong is that they have claimed London, with all its attitudes, as their own. This tension is further created by the fact that the theoretical models of identity connected to migrant discourses and explored by writers such as Rushdie are at points firmly critiqued. Smith takes this even further in her satire of American academic institutions in On Beauty, which intentionally distances the quotidian from intellectual meditations. The representation of Chanu, for example, can be seen as criticism of the meditative, academic approach to living. Although Chanu knows all the theorieshis own alienation, and the white fear of becoming an oppressed minority (Ali, Brick Lane 210)this only hinders his chances of success. What is needed, Alis narrative seems to suggest, are material improvements, rather than the complex language of postcolonial theory. Smith, too, privileges the practical over the intellectual. As Joyce intellectualizes Millats problemsself revulsion and hatred of his own kind [ ] slave mentality [ ] colour complex centred around his mother [ ] wish for his own annihilation by means of dilution in a white gene pool [ ] inability to reconcile two opposing cultures (Smith, White Teeth 322)this is contrasted with the simple assertions of Millat himself: Way-back-when in the fuddle of the hash and the talk Millat remembered a girl called Karina Somethingoranother whom he had liked. And she liked him. And she had a great sense of humour which felt like a miracle, and she looked after him when he was down and he looked after her too, in his own way, bringing her flowers and stuff. She seemed distant now, like conker fights and childhood. And that was that. (Smith, White Teeth 323) In the context of such anti-theory, the turn towards the language of postcolonial theories of migrancy stands out in even greater relief.

This is England, she said. You can do whatever you like (Ali, Brick Lane 413): post-postcolonialism
I do not, however, want to suggest that these novels should be homogenized into an easy postcolonial model. Two things distinguish each from the other: conclusion and context. In its denouement, White Teeth offers ambiguity, whereas Brick Lane offers positive affirmation, an ending which has attracted some uneasy critical responses. 8 Yet it does mean that, against White Teeth, Brick Lane ultimately tempers its concerns about British-born confidence. Central is the sense in which both migrant and British born are finally able to claim Britain as home. In her decision to stay in London, Nazneen finally claims belonging. Moreover, she claims this in unity with Shahana: the migrant and the British-born are reconciled. Rather than this being in favour of universal migrancy, it instead indicates a universalized belonging. Rather than both generations identifying with a migrant identity split between location of belonging and location of residence, both migrant and British-born characters instead follow the alternative model of coterminous residence and belonging to be identified with the British-born subject. Smith, in contrast, will not allow her migrants this release. These migrants are at times Londoners; Londoners, for example,

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have learnt not to look (151) at the citys mentally ill, and Samad is given this skill in avoiding Mad Mary (Smith, White Teeth 152). Yet only two pages later, Samad becomes not only a fellow traveller but also the foreign man in a foreign land caught between borders, united with Mad Mary because they are both divided people [ ] split people (15455). Without Alis counterpoints, White Teeth reads as a novel which, to the very end, juxtaposes belonging with a mode of description that destabilizes it, where the Holy Grail of self-confidence is ultimately unachievable. Equally, the pessimism of Alis novel, if contextualized, may be seen ironically as a discourse of British-born belonging. Three quarters into Brick Lane, a piece of New York dust blew across the ocean and settled on the Dogwood Estate (305). What results is not in keeping with this poetic image, but instead violent and extreme: young girls have their hijabs pulled off; Razia wears her Union Jack sweatshirt and is spat at. The fact that the violence here suggests repetition of earlier urban tensions is depressing. Yet a contextually and ethnically specific reading offers an alternative possibility. Things may indeed have changed, but 2001perhapspresents its own unique circumstances that have razed progress. In these terms, the depressive nature of much of Brick Lane, though not uncontroversial, seems understandable. Thus generalized optimism is tempered by an awareness of a more specifically British-Asian, indeed British-Muslim, reality. In general, there may be the opportunities of cross-cultural interaction that Shahana represents. But for the British-Muslim this has been undercut not by a continuance of anti-immigration prejudice or of migrant alienation but rather by a new and insidious form of religious discrimination. Not only 9/11 but also post-Iraq war tensions consume the 2001 section. Shahana finds on the television images of hooded young men, scarves wrapped Intifada-style around their faces, hurling stones, furious with cars that they set alight (228). These riot scenes, distanced from the Brick Lane community as being in a place called Oldhama place unknowncontextualizes reference to 9/11 within a wider discourse involving events abroad, and the growing moral panic inspired by the western medias Islamophobia. Even before both Oldham and 9/11, police are visiting the mosque and questioning the imam (169). Within this context, Karims growing fundamentalism needs to be seen not as the failure of integration in terms of the maintenance of a migrant outsider sensibility in the British-born citizen but rather as an indication of the rejection of those citizens as British by the state. Ironically, in this context, the novel can be reread not as a denial of the possibility of confident black British identity but a further affirmation of it. For, as Ash Amin outlines, the racial tensions of the North are not the uprising of a minority, but rather of a British-Asian generation finding their voice, frustration and public anger [that] cannot be detached from their identities as a new generation of British Asians claiming their right to own Oldham or Burnley and the nation (462). White Teeth, however, cannot be similarly situated. There is a sense that Smith is reflecting the increased trauma which comes fromin contrast to the first generation having no clear geography of belonging, no certain sense of the location of a home to return to (Stein 7). Yet Smith does this to the detriment of the possibilities of a British-born ethnic identity, a factor particularly notable given hints in the narrative that such identity exists, and Smiths own commentary in support of the novel being optimistic (Holbrook Gerzina 271). Thompsons ultimate conclusion is that the novels negativity is reflective of a universal condition: that in this era of globalisation we are all migrants (137). Indeed, the novel does describe both Archie and Samad as

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each having one leg in the present, one in the past (70) andopening with Archies attempted suicideengages widely with motifs of social alienation. Yet in attempting to universalize the experience of alienation, against Alis clear contextualization, Smith reduces specificities. Immigrants are bracketed as fugees, migrs, travellers (399) in a way that encapsulates Smiths process of generalization. This strategy situates the novel inside, rather than outside, the purist exclusivity it seems to challenge on a thematic level, and also illustrates the problems of those critiques of nationalism which reject revising national belonging in favour of postmodern statements of relativity. 9 Ultimately White Teeth is not only a reflection of a problem of marginality but, on another level, is itself a contributor to this marginality as it refuses to grant the British-born ethnic citizenor anyoneinsider status.
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Conclusion
Certainly, referencing the past is an integral part of ethnic British identities, and central to much literature focusing on these issues. Yet by continuing to follow postcolonial patterns of identifying blacks and Asians in Britain in terms of newness (Sandhu xvii) rather than settlement, not only do Smith, and Ali to a lesser extent, undermine the strength which their British-born characters at times seem to show, they also reveal their texts as out of step with wider black British literature and theory. In their focus on the trope of the outsider, they do not address definitions of black British writing such as R. Victoria Aranas, for whom this literature takes possession of the definition of Englishness to include diversity within Englishness [ ] decidedly not a faction that attempts to internationalise and, thus, to disintegrate the countrys culture and discourse. Its objectives are quite the opposite of globalisation, internationalisation, and universalism (232). Neither do they conform to Steins definition of a more empowered position than the migrant, which speaks not in terms of alienation but in terms of claiming ones space (17). Rather, in referring to wandering and instability, they present the black British experience as closer to what Procter defines as the diaspora discourse, which has tended to foreground the deterritorialised, itinerant nature of migrant cultures (12). The awkward referentialities that unconvincingly attempt to force these squarepegged British-confident characters into a round-shaped, migrant hole, jar when compared to other contemporary texts. One group of such texts, which might include Patrick Augustus Babyfather novels, Diran Adebayos Some Kind of Black and My Once Upon a Time, Bernadine Evaristos Soul Tourists, and Atima Srivastavas Looking for Maya, offers more rooted and confident British-born identities. In such texts, racial awareness is posited in a concern for identity, but the familiar terms of racial and cultural marginality are dispensed with to offer a more confident black British protagonist. A second group of more recent texts such as Nirpal Singh Dhaliwals Tourism, Diana Evans 26a, Suhayl Saadis Psychoraag, Gautam Malkanis Londonstani and (from the position of the white author) Neil Gaimans Anansi Boys realizes this possibility by either taking the acceptance of the black British figure for granted, or, in the case of Londonstani, turning the rules of engagement on their head. Bearing this in mind, we need to ask why texts which repeat the patterns of past identification have achieved the highest profile and have received the most accolades. 10

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Despite their success, what this analysis suggests is that if we are looking for a new vision of ethnic minority, British-born experience then perhaps neither Smith nor Ali, at least in their respective first novels, provides this. Instead, other narratives have emerged that are more capable of addressing black Britishness without postcolonial and migrant frames of reference. Undoubtedly, both Smith and Ali have engaged with ambiguities to present the complexities of being a migrant, or from a migrant family. Yet it is ironic that, in doing so, they blur some of the potential distinctions between a postwar, 20th-century migrant identity and the developed, ethnic minority community, much of it British born. The 9/11 context of Alis novel may indicate the reasons why her narrative cannot engage with British-born narrative like these other voices; for Smith, the issue may be more one of literary and theoretical models and intertextual rather than contextual influences. Yet whilst readers and literary agents expect a certain kind of answer, like Magid and Millats schoolteacher who gives Millat the sense, in his expression of his love for Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, that his response did not seem to be the right one (135), there will still be a demand for fiction framed in these familiar terms. One need only look at the relative failure of both Smiths and Alis second novels, The Autograph Man and Alentejo Blue, for evidence of this practice at work. Whether their representations are accurate matters little if we remove the burden of representation from migrant authors, allowing them the same imaginative freedom we give other contemporary novelists. This is significant in terms of Brick Lane where the reaction of some sections of the Bangladeshi community explicitly raised the issue of representation and reader expectations (Smiths novel, with its more ambiguous title and less racially-specific focus has avoided such harsh critiques). 11 Yet whilst it is important to note that these novels are not representative (as no novel should be held to be)reflective not only of the freedom of the artist but also of the porous and hazy (Procter 8) nature of ethnic definitionsequally, it should be acknowledged that there are competing representations which have a different relationship to the theories of identity within which discussions of black British novels are often placed. 12 In these terms, the reliance of Brick Lane and White Teeth not simply on black British culture but also on migratory experience, postcolonial frameworks, and earlier narrative tropes needs to be recognized. In interrogating the representation of black Britishness in these novels, we may open the way for greater awareness of alternative viewpoints that might interrogate their more conventional positions. Not to do so is to offer a narrow picture which, even with the burden of representation removed, risks reinforcing the popularization of British-born ethnic marginality which at first glance these texts appear to have challenged.

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Notes
1 2 3 4 Smith, White Teeth 160. I use black British to encompass both British-Asian and black British literature. However, I am aware of the debates surrounding this usage. Where a specifically British-Asian reference is made, this is indicated by the use of British-Asian. See, for example, Falconer, and Walker. See, for example, Sesay 1519. Distinctions between black British and postcolonial writing can also be found in Nasta and in Stein.

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6 7 8 9
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10 11 12

Ali is also rewriting these narratives in terms of gender and timescale. However, Buchi Emecheta and Jean Rhys rewrite the male migrant narrative, whilst Rushdie in The Satanic Verses exposes the late 20th-century Asian experience (Sandhu 106, 12729). Tebbits famous quotationThe cricket testwhich side do they cheer for? [ ] Are you still looking back to where you came from or where you are?is given as an epigraph to the second section of the novel (107). See, for example, Steins reading of Diran Adebayos Some Kind of Black (18). For the sort of alternative reading I propose, see Upstone. See, for example, Walter, and Gorra. This debate is best characterized by the dialogue between Gilroys The Black Atlantic and Chrismans Postcolonial Contraventions. For an interesting speculation on this by Adebayo see Alberge. See Hiddleston. The subsequent saga has been well covered, in particular by Maev Kennedy in The Guardian, who likened the response to The Rushdie Affair. The position on the burden of representation has been well documented by Issac Julien, Kobena Mercer, and Stuart Hall; see Procters summary (69).

Works cited
Adebayo, Diran. My Once Upon a Time. London: Abacus, 2000. . Some Kind of Black. London: Abacus, 1997. Alberge, Dalya. It Shouldnt Be So Black and White, Says Author. The Times 7 Oct. 2005: 11. Ali, Monica. Alentejo Blue. London: Doubleday, 2006. . Brick Lane. London: Doubleday, 2003. Amin, Ash. Unruly Strangers? The 2001 Urban Riots in Britain. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27 2 (2003): 46062. Arana, R. Victoria. The 1980s: Retheorising and Refashioning British Identity. Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature. Ed. Kadija Sesay. Hertford: Hansib, 2005. 23040. Augustus, Patrick. Babyfather. London: X Press, 1994. Bedell, Geraldine. Full of East End Promise. Observer 15 June 2003 <http:// observer.guardian.co.uk/bookgroup/story/0,13699,991603,00.html>. Accessed 1 Aug. 2006. Bhabha, Homi. The Commitment to Theory. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Chrisman, Laura. Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003. Dawes, Kwame. Negotiating the Ship on the Head: Black British Fiction. Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature. Ed. Kadija Sesay. Hertford: Hansib, 2005. 25581. Dhaliwal, Nirpal Singh. Tourism. London: Vintage, 2006. Evans, Diana. 26a. London: Chatto, 2005. Evaristo, Bernadine. Soul Tourists. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005. Falconer, Delia. Review. Sydney Morning Herald 2 Aug. 2003 <http://www.smh.com.au/ articles/2003/08/01/1059480538023.html>. Accessed 1 Aug. 2006. Gaiman, Neil. Anansi Boys. London: Headline, 2005.

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Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Gorra, Michael. East Enders. New York Times 7 Sept. 2003 <http://query.nytimes. com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E6DB1E39F934A35AC0A9659C8B63&sec=& pagewanted =2>. Accessed 1 Aug. 2006. Hall, Stuart. Frontlines and Backyards: The Terms of Change. Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader. Ed. Kwesi Owusu. London: Routledge, 2000. 12730. . New Ethnicities. Reprinted in Writing Black Britain 19481998: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Ed. James Procter. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. 26574. Hiddleston, Jane. Shape and Shadows: (Un)veiling the Immigrant in Monica Alis Brick Lane. Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40 1 (2005): 5772. Holbrook Gerzina, Gretchen. Zadie Smith. Writing across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk. Ed. Susheila Nasta. London: Routledge, 2004. 26678. Kennedy, Maev. In a Sense, if You Come Under Fire From Those Conservative People, You Must be Doing Something Right. Guardian 28 July 2006. http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1832294,00.html Lamming, George. The Emigrants. London: Michael Joseph, 1954. Malkani, Gautam. Londonstani. London: Fourth Estate, 2006. Merritt, Stephanie. Shes Young, Black, Britishand the First Publishing Sensation of the Millennium. Observer 16 Jan. 2000. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/ generalfiction/story/0,,122817,00.html Naipaul, V.S. The Mimic Men. London: Deutsch, 1967. Nasta, Susheila. Home Truths: Fictions of the South-Asian Diaspora in Britain. London: Palgrave, 2002. Procter, James. Dwelling Places: Postwar Black British Writing. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003. Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. London: Vintage, 1988. Sandhu, Sukhdev. London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City. London: HarperCollins, 2003. Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. London: Longman, 1956. Sesay, Kadija. Introduction. Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature. Ed. Kadija Sesay. Hertford: Hansib, 2005. 1519. Smith, Zadie. The Autograph Man. London: Random, 2002. . On Beauty. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005. . White Teeth. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000. Srivastava, Atima. Looking for Maya. London: Quartet, 1999. Stein, Mark. Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2004. Suhayl Saadi, Psychoraag. Edinburgh: Black and White, 2004. Thompson, Molly. Happy Multicultural Land?: The Implications of an Excess of Belonging in Zadie Smiths White Teeth. Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature. Ed. Kadija Sesay. Hertford: Hansib, 2005. 12337. Upstone, Sara. Negotiations of London as Imperial Urban Space in the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel. Urban Spaces and Cityscapes: Perspectives from Modern and Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge, 2006. 88100. Walker, Nicola. The State of Bengali England. The Age 23 Aug. 2003 <http:// www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/20/1061368348340.html>. Accessed 1 Aug. 2006. Walter, Natasha. Citrus Scent of Inexorable Desire. Guardian 14 June 2003 <http:// books.guardian.co.uk/bookerprize2003/story/0,13819,1019773,00.html>. Accessed 1 Aug. 2006.

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Sara Upstone is Lecturer in English Literature at Kingston University, Surrey. Her research interests include postcolonial literature, black British and British-Asian literature. She has published on authors including Wilson Harris, Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, and Diran Adebayo. Address: 43 Chatham Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 3AB, UK. [email: s.upstone@kingston.ac.uk]

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