Is she worth it? Give me your hot takes.
Takes are hotter if you are able to defend her changing her name.
http://www.cosmoetica.com/B556-DES481.htm
>>7748089
"one has to call a spade a spade"
that made me laugh. shame he qualified it as being not a racial slur after.
>>7748086
>Woman
>Worth it
nigga you serious
>>7748086
The sex scene she wrote in On Beauty is literotica.com-tier.
>>7748111
can this meme die? i'm willing to accept that women may be less likely to produce good art, but i'll never believe that they're incapable of it.
>>7748089
>she's average looking
edgy as fuck desu senpai.
I agree you got to wonder how much her sex appeal and ethnic heritage have to do with her success.
WE
WUZ
AUTHORZZZZZZ
>>7748154
>can this meme die?
can memes truly die?
>>7748203
An example:
>that's not funny, my brother died that way
as a reply-all to anything and everything
has well and truly died
>>7748219
but it necessarily included death in itself
>>7748219
but you have used it. it is still in the memory of man, or in his annals of history. i would posit that it is not dead, but rather dormant.
>>7748219
Memes are a social construct.
She ripped off DFW in and out of her writing, right down to the head cloth, and she got a quote on the cover of IJ because of it. Fuck that bitch
>>7748086
>Madame Zubumba
kek
>>7748086
I can't possibly defend her changing her name. She was an awkward child who thought that she could be taken more seriously by attaching herself to the legacy of disgruntled black intellectuals, and if she had a shred of pride she would accept the name her parents gave her.
Like Zadie isn't even any sort of African name. It just sounds blacker.
>>7748086
it's just a cooler sounding name
she was 14 years old
how can one not defend this?
>>7748488
It's like if I changed my name to Cobra Strike when I was 8 and then went on to publish under than name for decades.
>>7748496
it's just a voiced consonant instead of unvoiced, it's not like calling yourself "falconwing"
>>7748496
>Cobra Strike
You're telling me you wouldn't want to be called that? That's a kickass name.
>>7748086
She is half-white. But prefers to present herself as full-black. These people enjoy both the actual whatever remnant privileges there remain of actually being white, and still brand themselves as black/minority to guilt-trip others and claim special consideration. Just like how Obama plays both blacks and white on the palm of his hand.
>>7748535
why wouldn't one do that?
if you have to live with being black, may as well milk it
>>7748111
I know you're just trying to be part of this, but you look stupid doing it.
>>7748543
Self-respect maybe.
If you grow up posh enough to go to Cambridge and then try to sell yourself as a member of an oppressed class because you grew up being called exotic, that's pretty lame (this applies to hot Asian girls who complain about white guys being attracted to them on social media).
>>7748496
I'd die laughing if I went into B&N or someplace and saw a book by "Cobra Strike" there. Someone needs to legally change their name to that and publish something.
>>7748566
you're damned either way, to be honest family
either you're hiding or raging; balance is difficult
I read White Teeth. I thought it was quite good.
>>7748543
I don't know. I wrote it down with a little bit of contempt because imo such behaviour amounts to insincerity and pushes back the problems of actually oppressed people who couldn't have gained a voice as easily. A perverse version of this is of that white girl who pretended to be black and was even president of some black organisation.
I am Indian myself, I live in American West Coast, have a six figure job and got the best this country had to offer. I've never faced racism, except probably at the TSA. I guess I can go all Jhumpa Lahiri and whine about the immigrant experience and try to guilt people into giving me attention, but I feel that should be reserved for people who actually had to go through shit for their skin colour, not rich privileged folks and their imagined disabilities.
>>7748647
Off-topic, but have you gone to university in the US? I've heard that Indians and South-East asians are discriminated against in higher education because they're "over-represented".
>>7748667
Yes I have. But I wouldn't know because I was an international student applying for Masters back then. The over-representation is problematic when it comes to domestic quotas, and I can understand that concern.
>>7748647
yeah but you're some sort of computer guy/doctor/engineer/lawyer
when you are an artist you dwell on little things, it's what makes for interesting work, and the things that pierced themselves in her memory at age 14 were probably a few shitty people making reference to her skin and that of her brothers and feeling weird about it (also parental dynamic)
we are all struck by different things, she just happens to have a job where the point is talking about being struck -- somewhat eloquently
you have a different job
i have an in-between job
i don't pity her or others that board the oppression express, but in her case (unlike that of many others), it is her job to make something of that
>>7748647
Based South Asians. Most affluent ethnicity in the states, strongest family values, and don't go in for SJW self-pity.
The Associatikb of South Asian Students at my university threw all of the most fun campus events and loads of white people tried out for the Indian dance groups because it was obviously a great time.
If Dr. King Schultz is to be believed, Alexandre Dumas was black. Wrote the most badass books of his time without having to be a whiny faggot about being called exotic/a nigger.
A white version of Zadie Smith is Rudyard Kipling. If you read his biographies, he looked "extremely tanned" even for a white colonial in India. He spent his formative years in the colony, and when he went to school in England he was massively bullied for looking dark and speaking English with a slight Indian accent. Took him years to grow out of this trauma. Still had nothing but contempt for the colored folks and coined the phrase "White Man's Burden".
>>7748702
>The Associatikb of South Asian Students at my university threw all of the most fun campus events and loads of white people tried out for the Indian dance groups because it was obviously a great time.
White Teeth is one of the best novels written this century so far tbqh
>>7748086
>you are able to defend her changing her name.
What does her name have to do with the quality of her writing? What do the personal qualities of the artist have to do with the quality of the art? Not being able to separate the art from the artist is pleb-tier criticism.
>>7748086
She is a hipster's Toni Morrison, with not even a fraction of the talent.
>>7748999
Nah, White Teeth was good, which puts Zadie head and shoulders above Toni Morrison.
>>7748203
rage comics, advice animals, grizzly bear, the list goes on...
>>7749097
People still unironically use all of those memes on Reddit and Facebook, and they're ironically used on 4chan.
>>7748086
White Teeth is easily the best prose written in the 20th century.
>>7748219
>that example
that's not funny, my brother died that way.
Why does she wear that turban? I've seen female sikhs wear them on occasion, but I don't think Zadie is a sikh. I have no idea if her books are good or not, I've sort of lumped her in with "stuff r/books likes" which may or may not have been fair. I can't read everything.
>>7749148
it's her replacement for a bandana
>>7748940
apparently dumas had a ghostwriter.
who remembers THAT show? holy shit.
>>7748086
I've heard great things about White Teeth and her earlier works, BUT lately she's been publishing a lot of garbage. She did a particularly awful story in The New Yorker about Michael Jackson and 911.
>>7749148
Sikh girls don't wear it "on occasion".
There are certain Sikh girls who are "Amritdhari", which in Punjabi/Sanskrit literally means, "have tasted/accepted holy water". They will not shave, remain celibate and are basically like nuns. I don't know much about them in detail but you can look it up.
Zadie wears that turban for two reasons:
1. To hide that obnoxiously large forehead of hers, the female version of hiding baldness with Fedoras
2. She wants to appear as "Proud Jamaican Woman who wears the clothes of my People" (but only if it is chic, fashionable and convenient) to continue milking that little black blood she has in her to appear different to the literary world.
>>7748154
i hate to be the one to tell you this but you're a cuck my friend
>>7749174
>They will not shave, remain celibate and are basically like nuns
So they are like me.
Seriously though there were a couple at my high school and I never really understood why, it was common enough for the boys/men to wear something but not the women.
>>7748086
Ya Bishhh
>>7748940
So Rudyard Kipling was a white Uncle Tom
>>7749229
He was basically Uncle Ruckus.
>>7749148
it's a creole head wrap. i thought people knew this
>>7749314
>Why is that autist wearing that hat?
>You: It is a fedora, you illiterate pleb.
>>7748535
>These people enjoy both the actual whatever remnant privileges there remain of actually being white
Nah. That's only true insofar as they might have indirectly gained white privilege by being exposed to white environments. For example, Obama was raised in a middle/upper middle class, white and asian area of hawaii and went to elite schools full of white people. But I guarantee you that if he weren't famous and he walked outside in a cheap sweatshirt and attempted to get a cab, he still couldn't get one.
> still brand themselves as black/minority to guilt-trip others and claim special consideration
Ya, because until he opens his mouth and makes his background clear, Obama is just another black guy. If not for his fame, other people would see him as just some black person.
>>7748940
So I guess he didn't grow out of it at all and made his race and racial conflict a central point of his work?
I have to agree with something said before in this thread. As much as I personally hate a topic, art doesn't just come of nowhere. If she decided to blow up the black perspective it doesn't seem all that different from any other author blowing up some miniscule part of their personality for art.
>>7748463
Dude, she changed her name at 14. It would have been a dick move if she were older, but can't you chalk it up to teenage posturing? Plus if you spend your formative years calling yourself Zadie, you can be pretty sure that that's how you'll end up think of yourself and be reluctant to change back.
>>7748566
You don't have to be posh to go to Cambridge (although it certainly helps). The UK education system is not quite as fucked as the US, so a decent number (although not a representative number) of working class kids go to Oxbridge. Smith was one of them. For more on her father's class background, see the the essay "Dead Man Laughing" (actually a really good read, one of her best).
Is it worth starting out with (or reading at all) anything other than White Teeth? my library has On Beauty and NW
>>7749355
Have you ever seen high-school dramas/movies/comics from Korea/Japan? There is often a wimpy bitch with a group of bullies. That wimpy bitch in turn is the most violent, and bullies other wimps to please his masters, and take out repressed urges, and compensate for his own wimpyness.
The same thing with Rudyard Kipling. But the similarity with Zadie Smith is different. Kipling would denigrate the culture of his original upbringing, compensating for it by all-too-gladly embracing and sticking to his White Man's Pride. Zadie does the same, except for the opposite race.
Unlike Zadie, Kipling atleast had some original stories to tell. He turned the Indians of his childhood into Animals, with himself as the lost kid who'd been taken out of his nativity (English culture) and raised by the animal wilderness (Indian civ). He was old-school enough to actually have a tale to spin from his existential yarn, one that would entertain for centuries. Can't say the same for Zadie.
>>7749355
>>7748685
Somewhere, you people seem to have lost sense of the frontier between literature and propaganda.
I can amplify every uncomfortable situation, awkward conversation, the smallest of anxieties, make it to suit my agenda and build my career around it. I can depict America, or any society whatsoever, however I want by simply dramatizing the truth.
But then I would have no belonging to the world of literature. I would be a peddler of falsehood, a pamphleteer.
>>7749472
nw is pretty good
NW is my favorite. I haven't read The Autograph Man, but that's supposed to be her worst.
