Abstract:
This thesis will explore the concept of cultural transfer in the first-generation
and the second-generation of post-war identities in the novels of two British
Caribbean women writers: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and Andrea Levy’s
Small Island (2004). In this thesis, I will argue that the emergence of heterogeneous
cultures through multicultural relations challenges homogeneous cultures and
identities. More specifically, this thesis examines the deconstruction of monolithic
cultures within the arrival of first-generation immigrants and the defeat of hierarchy
in cultures and ethnicities through the complex relations of the second generation.
This thesis will demonstrate that hybridity is a powerful form that not only
challenges homogeneous cultures and identities but also blossoms a multicultural
future in London. In this respect, Smith’s White Teeth and Levy’s Small Island
conclude with a mixed-race baby as a resolution of racial and cultural tensions and
the mirror of a multicultural London in the future. While Small Island portrays
hybridity with the birth of Queenie’s mixed-race baby, Michael, White Teeth extends
it further through the indeterminate genetics of Irie’s baby as a rejection of the
significance of racial and cultural roots forever. Even though stereotypical cultural
and racial formats of the past are no more than a myth for the second generation, the
first generation imposes the racial and cultural prejudices arising from cultural and
racial stereotypes on the second generation. However, the birth of different cultural
and ethnic origins in one body defeats racial ideology for a multicultural future in
London. Thus, this thesis will conclude that first-generation immigrants are
imprisoned by the racial ideology of the past, while the second-generation disrupts
the universalization of stereotypes based on racial ideology imposed by the first
generation, with the birth of the third generation
