The following is based on Zadie Smith’s essay “Speaking in Tongues” (2009):
Zadie Smith is a writer. She speaks in a posh British accent. But when she was growing up in the Willesden section of London, the daughter of a white Englishman and a black Jamaican woman, she had a different accent.
For a while she could speak in both accents as the circumstances required, but then bit by bit her childhood accent went away. All she had left was just her posh accent.
She spoke that way not because she hated where she was from, but because she thought the way people spoke at Cambridge University where she went was the way lettered people spoke. And she wanted to be a lettered person.
Now looking back she sees it as a loss. Most people have just one voice, even if it changes over time. But a fortunate few can speak in more than one voice. Two that come to mind are Shakespeare and, yes, Barack Obama.
Authors often have to be able to speak in many voices. It makes their stories more believable. Shakespeare was a master at it. He was so good that even though he was a Protestant people still wonder 400 years later whether he was a secret Catholic.
And it is partly why some wonder if Obama is a secret Muslim. Like Shakespeare he can speak in many voices. He changes how he speaks depending on his audience. He says “we” instead of “I”. He can say things like this:
We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
Taking “awesome God” from the churches of Georgia and “poking around” from the kitchen tables of Indiana.
Shakespeare could do it because he grew up between Catholic and Protestant worlds. Obama can do it because he grew up between the black and white American worlds. And so he can see them as worlds. Instead of being stuck between them, like a tragic mulatto, he moves between them.
Some might see that as underhanded but Zadie Smith sees it as having a broader view of the world, seeing it more as it is. Most presidents, like most people, stick to their own kind and so have a narrow view of the world. Not Obama.
On the night that Obama won she was at a party of white New York liberals when she got a call from a German friend to come uptown to a Harlem reggae bar. She looked at her dress and thought about her posh British accent and did not want to go. But then she saw that as:
A hesitation in the face of difference, which leads to caution before difference and ends in fear of it. Before long, the only voice you recognize, the only life you can empathize with, is your own.
See also:
Willesden… very local to me
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she also was VERY derogatory when an journalist made the…. “mistake” of lumping her into a group of black female writers such as maya angelou, toni morrisson et al. I think that it was rather unpleasant, she could have denied her membership on grounds of her culture, her nationality, but she did it on the grounds that she thougth she was much different from those women. bitch!
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Wow.
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I really enjoyed Speaking in Tongues (iTunes has it live for free). I’ve read all of Zadie Smith except Autograph Man & watched White Teeth on PBS when it aired a few years ago.
Thanks for this.
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I read her book, On Beauty, and I liked it. It was a bit…out there, but it was interesting nonetheless.
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damn! How what kind of person gets UPSET for being included in the ranks of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou…puzzling….
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>>Obama can do it because he grew up between the black and white American worlds. <<
I would differ. Obama was raised in Hawaii, which has a very, very different racial culture from that on the US mainland.
There are several differences between the ethnic environment of Hawaii and that of the mainland.
1. There are more different ethnic groups
2. No ethnic group has a demographic majority
3. The ethnic group with the greatest overt cultural influence (native Hawaiian) is a superminority–one of the smallest groups
4. A mixed racial heritage is a long-standing, widespread point of pride. Being able to boast a mixed racial heritage is a plus for a Hawaii politician or businessperson.
5. There is no significant black/white dynamic in Hawaii
6. Basically, being white in Hawaii means a bit less than on the mainland. It's the only place I've seen in the US where being white is routinely a school playground disadvantage, and white kids actually felt socially disadvantaged by their skin color. It's probably the only place in the US where white kids grow up with "Damn, I wish I was something else" syndromes.
7. Race and ethnicity are casually discussed, including stereotypes.
8. In Obama's childhood, there were no "black and white worlds" for him to be in between. That was something he READ about, heard about on the news, the way we hear about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He didn't hear anyone, black or white, using the n-word (the Hawaiian slur is "popolo").
So Obama grew up in a world that has none of the racial touchpoints of Mainland US–what he knows about being an "African-American" is what he learned after moving to Chicago. It's all learned as an adult.
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RDKirk,
“2. No ethnic group has a demographic majority”
This is true, but if you count “races” as ethnic groups (as Americans often do), then Asian would be the largest demographic, at a bit over 40 percent of the population.
“3. The ethnic group with the greatest overt cultural influence (native Hawaiian) is a superminority–one of the smallest groups”
True again, unless you also count those who are part Hawaiian, in which case they would be one of the largest groups.
“8. In Obama’s childhood, there were no “black and white worlds” for him to be in between. That was something he READ about, heard about on the news, the way we hear about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He didn’t hear anyone, black or white, using the n-word.”
No, not true. In Dreams From My Father, he recounts an incident where his basketball coach called the opposing team “n*ggers”, and he went off on him. Also, he and his friend lament that none of the white girls wanted to hang with them at parties, but they would gladly hang with the white or Asian guys. Then his friend claims the reason he (Obama) wasn’t picked to start on the basketball team despite being one of the best players, and other (white) players were chosen, was because he was black… There were a few incidents where he might have felt a divide between himself and others.
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>>“2. No ethnic group has a demographic majority”
This is true, but if you count “races” as ethnic groups (as Americans often do), then Asian would be the largest demographic, at a bit over 40 percent of the population.<>“3. The ethnic group with the greatest overt cultural influence (native Hawaiian) is a superminority–one of the smallest groups”
True again, unless you also count those who are part Hawaiian, in which case they would be one of the largest groups.<>“8. In Obama’s childhood, there were no “black and white worlds” for him to be in between. That was something he READ about, heard about on the news, the way we hear about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He didn’t hear anyone, black or white, using the n-word.”
No, not true. In Dreams From My Father, he recounts an incident where his basketball coach called the opposing team “n*ggers”, and he went off on him. Also, he and his friend lament that none of the white girls wanted to hang with them at parties, but they would gladly hang with the white or Asian guys. Then his friend claims the reason he (Obama) wasn’t picked to start on the basketball team despite being one of the best players, and other (white) players were chosen, was because he was black… There were a few incidents where he might have felt a divide between himself and others.<<
Now, what is funny here is the recognition that "nigger" is a seriously disparaging term without actually applying it to the proper people. Of course Obama knew that "nigger" is a slur, he'd know what it means, and he'd be angry to hear it. But he didn't hear it from white people the way I heard it in the American south–it wasn't ingrained into his childhood.
Alas, the world is hung up on fair skin, and that's true everywhere.
And, I suspect Obama will always have a political need to affirm his African-American credentials.
But my son and my daughter were also children in Hawaii (my son was born in the same hospital as Obama), and I saw their experiences.
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I have taught Smith’s work in my courses–and she is right not to want to be included in the ranks of Morrison and Angelou.
Yes she is a part of the black woman collective in literature, but she definately is coming from a different place. For one thing, the black women in her novels have absolute control of their lives and well-being. They are not stagnant and basing their decisions on that of their respective communities. While I love Morrison, she paints an entirely different reality of the black woman (of one who isn’t in total control and is often times reduced to the sexual gratification of the men in her life)
Smith characters are just the opposite. Also Smith’s asethetic is different as well–so i understand why she would have been offended. It’s that old mentality that ALL black women must be the same and perceive race and gender the same. I bet the people who compared her work to that of Morrison and Angelou hadn’t even picked up her books let alone read them.
Yes, her themes do center around racism, classism and sexism,but under an entirely different backdrop.
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@ Phoebeprunelle. You are so right.
As there is no Single Story, so there is more than Only One Type of Writer.
I’ve only read one of her books, and she is nothing like Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison. It’s a mistake to just “group” her with every woman of African descent who writes excellent books!
Ms Smith IS an individual from a different place and the orientation of her characters are an ocean away…her voice and content are her own.
Quite different.
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I have picked up the book “White Teeth, I will challenge myself to read it.
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@ Mary, I’m already curious about your review of it!
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@ Bulainik: This will be a HUGE challenge for me a reader. But that’s what it’s about, getting out of the comfort zone, I just mastered Toni Morrison. This will be a challenge. I don’t know if I will be successful, but I have to do this if I am to grow.
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I love Maya Angelou and Alice Walker, and Terri Mcmillian. But I need to stretch myself. This Zadie Smith is intimidating to me as a reader.
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@ Mary, I am intimidated by practically all books, all writing, as it gets jumbled up when I try to tackle it. I can’t seem to do anything about it, no matter what.
If you can read Toni Morrison — then you can certainly read anything in the English language, in my opinion. Ms Morrison is a truly amazing writer, her language is so deep.
If you have the time, you might like to dip into Channel 4 adaptation of Zadie Smith’s book; it might ease the process of reading it?
Here is Episode One of White Teeth:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2-LcZvB4nA)
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