Reading intimacy, resistance and intertextuality in Zadie Smith’s Grand Union

Abstract

This article focuses on Zadie Smith’s experimental short story ‘Kelso Deconstructed’, published in her first short story collection Grand Union (2019). The story reimagines the last day in the life of Kelso Cochrane, who migrated to Britain during the post-war period as part of the Windrush generation, and who was murdered in 1959. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, I situate ‘Kelso Deconstructed’ within Smith’s preoccupations with matters of intimacy, writing and resistance in Grand Union, and in her essay collection Intimations (2020). Secondly, I examine Smith’s rewriting of this historical event through her use of intertextual references to Toni Morrison, Francis Ponge, Leo Tolstoy and Toni Cade Bambara. Ultimately, this article argues that Smith uses multiple strategies to create proximity between readers and the historical events depicted, and to deconstruct the symbol of Kelso Cochrane to instead offer an intimate representation of a singular human being.