Born to a Jamaican mother and an English father in 1975, Zadie Smith published her first novel, White Teeth, in 2000, to immediate critical acclaim, winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Our course examines this postcolonial novel that focuses on Britain's relationship with immigrants from the Commonwealth in the context of British imperial history. Despite this focus on identity in the novel that launched her career, at the 14th Hay Cartagena festival in Colombia Zadie Smith insisted that novelists had a duty to be free, and that “identity is a huge pain in the arse.” In an essay in her collection, Feel Free, she shares how as a mixed-race teenager growing up on a London housing estate she had despised Joni Mitchell: “The reason for hating Joni Mitchell was that I didn’t listen to classical or ‘white’ music.” She adds: “Then I had an epiphany, and suddenly realised that her voice was beautiful. It’s a responsibility to be as open as you possibly can to the world as an aesthetic object.” Harnessing the tension that results in examining Smith’s postcolonial novel in the context of her anti-identitarian creative philosophy of openness, this course will examine Zadie Smith’s politics in White Teeth—a story of hybridity, of an unlikely friendship set against London's racial and cultural tapestry. We will use Smith’s interviews, talks, and shorter essays, as well as literary criticism, media criticism, history, and film to examine Zadie Smith as a novelist.