CVK
Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth: A Novel and On Beauty, has received a lot of bad press over the years. She’s frequently portrayed as cocky, aloof, and well, bitchy. The latest article on Smith continues to paint a not-so-pretty picture. From the U.K.’s Telegraph:

Zadie Smith is to resume her tricky relationship with the Orange Prize for Fiction after being placed on the long list for the country’s most prestigious women’s literary prize for the third time.

Six years ago, at 24, Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, reached the short list for the £30,000 award, which she called “just another prize”. She said that she would not turn up to the award ceremony and insisted that she would rather win “something smaller and more relevant”.

For good measure, the mixed race author, who has won praise for her writing on multi-cultural Britain, said one of the judges, Ffion Hague, the wife of the then Conservative Party leader, William Hague, could “kiss my behind”.

I have to say that I often wonder whether these rumors of her have any truth to them, or whether people are just angry at a young writer not being more grateful for her success, or… whether they’re just ascribing the bitchy black woman stereotype to her because she happens to be of black heritage?