Historical Memory and the Formation of Hybrid Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth

This article examines the relationship between historical memory and the formation of hybrid identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, focusing on the intergenerational dynamics of the Iqbal family. It investigates how representations of the colonial past become sources of familial authority and how their transmission encounters divergent responses in the younger generation. The study combines close reading with cultural memory studies and a postcolonial understanding of identity, using Jan Assmann’s distinction between social and biological transmission and Stuart Hall’s account of identification as historically situated and unfinished, and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of cultural hybridity. Particular attention is paid to Samad’s investment in ancestral history and to Magid’s and Millat’s contrasting negotiations of inherited cultural expectations. Historical events are distinguished from characters’ selective interpretations of them. The discussion examines how retrospective narration, irony, and juxtaposition complicate claims to cultural continuity. It argues that historical memory functions as a contested interpretative resource through which belonging is asserted, challenged, and reformulated. Hybrid identity is consequently understood as an uneven process shaped by familial demands, colonial legacies, and individual choices. By relating the transmission of historical narratives to their formal presentation, the article explains how the novel exposes the difference between the persistence of the past and its capacity to determine the future. The proposed interpretation remains specific to the selected characters and narrative episodes.