The Dilemma And Pursuit Of Cultural Identity For Non-white Minorities—a Study Of Zadie Smith‘s Three Novels

Zadie Smith is an outstanding writer, who receives much attention in today‘s English literature. With the first novel White Teeth published, Smith achieved a great success. Later, she published another two novels The Autograph Man and On Beauty which consolidated her position in the literary world. On the basis of post-colonial literary theory, this paper tries to explore non-white minorities‘ dilemma of cultural identities in multicultural context of the post-colonial age.Firstly, this paper briefly introduces Zadie Smith and her novels, in addition to the research status, the research significance and the theoretical framework. Then, it analyzes what causes the dilemma of cultural identity in these novels. The first reason is that the non-white minorities who live in the context of Anglo-Saxon English society have suffered from long-term racial discrimination, which leads them to be marginalized and excluded from the mainstream culture. The second reason is the British popular mass culture, which, as a form of cultural hegemony, has an unconsciously impact on the values and lifestyles of those immigrant communities. The third reason is that along with immigration and historical changes, cultures and identities are often in a composite state, which also brings about the dilemma of cultural identity. Next comes to the analysis of the characters in novels. The paper expounds identity chaos, the loss or the extreme pursuit of cultural identity. Lastly, through the analysis of the characters in the novels, this paper proposes some feasible solutions to cope with dilemma in cultural identity. And it points out that in multicultural Britain, the non-white should adopt an open attitude to rethink Englishness and accept their physical features to establish their subjectivity, which will pave the way for pursuing cultural identity. Due to the inevitable conflicts caused by differences in race and culture, people should be more focused on common humanities to in the process of pursuing of cultural identity.In conclusion, it is advisable for people to hold a more open and tolerant attitude towards their cultural identities in the post-colonial society marked by multi-culture.