CVK
Zadie Smith has been widely lambasted in the media (especially in the U.K.) for being unpleasant, ungrateful, and snobby. As I wondered back in March, do these perceptions have anything to do with her race? Anyway, she seems like a perfectly pleasant person in this interview with The Times, and has some interesting things to say about people’s attempts to label and exoticize her and her writing:

Perhaps, I suggest, the frantic interest in her is because we’re all scrabbling about for a spokesperson for multiculturalism. “Well, yes,” she says, “except that I’m not that multicultural, I’m only half Jamaican and half English. I’m always being described as if I were representative of all nations. I’m not qualified. It’s really not that exotic — I’ve lived in Willesden for 30 years.

“I’m constantly being asked, especially in Europe, about immigrant literature and what it’s like to be an immigrant. I’m not an immigrant. I was born in the Royal Free!”(The Royal Free is a hospital in Hampstead, north London.) Okay, then maybe we’re all fascinated by her fame? “Fame,” she says sternly, “is not a thing to envy. Everyone knows that. A happy marriage is a thing to envy. I’ve got a very happy marriage, you can envy that. Or having good friends. These are worth envying. But fame, fame doesn’t make anybody happy.”

Well maybe it’s because she’s beautiful, and clams up whenever the question of her looks comes up (American Vogue had difficulty persuading Zadie to talk about clothes for an interview).