Abstract
In White Teeth, Zadie Smith portrays the lives of three immigrant families in Britain in the late half of twentieth century. Besides the generally celebrated theme of multiculturalism, this article argues that the novel is an exploration of the relationship between the identity of the second-generation immigrants and their fathers’ masculinity. The lack of masculinity in the fathers among the first-generation immigrants makes the second-generation immigrants cannot construct their British identity, they have to turn to other fatherly fingers for financial and social capital. Through the portrait of masculinity, the author expresses her concern of the racial discrimination against the immigrants and the importance of first-generation immigrants’ masculinity. But on the other hand, the novel’s portrait of men without masculinity intensified the stereotyped negative image of immigrants.
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