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Culture October 18, 2016
“I’m just a writer of life [and] what I see around me,” Zadie Smith tells The New York Times.
Zadie Smith is a British novelist, essayist and short story writer who has received substantial critical praise. She is best known for being the “brilliant mind” behind novels like “White Teeth” and “N-W.” Her newest novel, “Swing Time,” releases on November 15th, and has been described by Kirkus Reviews as a “controlled novel about dance and blackness [that] steps onto a stage of cultural land mines.”
This good book to read tells the story of two brown girls who aspire to be dancers. Only one of them, however, has the talent. The other girl simply has ideas “about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free.” Overall, this novel is a story about friendship, music and cultural roots. It is a story about how our environment shapes us and how we can survive the circumstances in our lives.
In the video above, Zadie Smith reveals her motivations and what inspires her to write these kinds of stories. “The only thing I’m really trying to [ask] is, ‘What does it feel like to be alive?’ … Experience [depends] on all kids of things,” Smith says. “Class, the year you were born, race, place – I’m interested in all those differences.”
Watch The New York Times’ video to learn more about this inspirational woman. But if you’d like to actually meet Zadie Smith in person, then you can attend one of her readings on the “Swing Time” tour.
