{"id":51142,"date":"2017-01-12T03:42:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T03:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51142"},"modified":"2017-01-12T03:42:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T03:42:39","slug":"the-world-of-zadie-smith-mixed-race-people-and-polychromatic-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51142","title":{"rendered":"The World of Zadie Smith: Mixed-Race People and Polychromatic Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\/98732\/zadie-smith-mixed-race-people-polychromatic-dreams\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>The World of Zadie Smith: Mixed-Race People and Polychromatic Dreams<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\" target=\"_blank\">The Wire<\/a><br \/>\n2017-01-11<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\/author\/radhika-oberoi\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Radhika Oberoi<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49495\" target=\"_blank\">Swing Time<\/a><em>\u00a0like its predecessors is intensely curious about race, but it is also curious about so much more than race, such as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, <\/em>Ali Baba Goes to Town\u00a0<em>and Michael Jackson.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Cool Britannia, slickly marketed by Tony Blair\u2019s Labour government, was hardly a monochromatic one. The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/London\" target=\"_blank\">London<\/a> of Alexander McQueen, Oasis, Blur, Damien Hurst and the Spice Girls was a pastiche of the preceding Conservative regimes and a variegated motif of multiculturalism. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5220\" target=\"_blank\"><em>White Teeth<\/em><\/a>, that rollicking sketch of the post-colonial migrant experience, that comical world of inter-locking narratives \u2013 a genre that James Wood compellingly defined as \u2018hysterical realism\u2019 \u2013 landed amidst the boisterous icons of Cool Britannia in 2000, announcing the arrival of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zadie_Smith\" target=\"_blank\">Zadie Smith<\/a> \u2013 young, black, British, freckled, high cheek-boned.<\/p>\n<p><em>White Teeth<\/em>, an ostensibly hilarious examination of the vagaries of racially mixed friendships, is perhaps the loudest testimony to what Smith does best \u2013 bring the Joneses, the Iqbals and the Chalfens together in the hybrid topography of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Willesden\" target=\"_blank\">Willesden<\/a> in north-west London. The book is, as described by Smith herself, in an interview, \u201c\u2026a kind of mishmash, as first novels tend to be\u201d.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49495\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Swing Time<\/em><\/a>, Smith\u2019s newest fiction, published in November 2016, is an evocation of that very universe \u2013 a hotchpotch of people and places, a medley of sights and sounds and smells. It is also a deeper and somewhat quieter rumination on race&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire review <a href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\/98732\/zadie-smith-mixed-race-people-polychromatic-dreams\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The World of Zadie Smith: Mixed-Race People and Polychromatic Dreams The Wire 2017-01-11 Radhika Oberoi Swing Time\u00a0like its predecessors is intensely curious about race, but it is also curious about so much more than race, such as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ali Baba Goes to Town\u00a0and Michael Jackson. Cool Britannia, slickly marketed by Tony Blair\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,5,8,10],"tags":[25963,20728,1344],"class_list":["post-51142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-radhika-oberoi","tag-the-wire","tag-zadie-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51143,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51142\/revisions\/51143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}