Zadie Smith is a writer and essayist who brings with her an modern, multicultural outlook on art and expression. As Dwight Gardner writes in The New York Times:
“Smith, who is English-Jamaican, has prized open in her fiction a modern, multicultural, post-post-colonial England. In addition to being devastatingly good, her novels describe the ways society has changed in advance of phenomena like to give just one example the arrival of a figure like Meghan Markle as the Duchess of Sussex”
She also supplies newemphasis on the humanities and their importance today. Consider how she uses Milton to describe Jay-Z: “Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.”
Smith is a fascinating writer and we are excited to hear more from her later this semester when she visits the Tsai Performance Center for a talk on writing with Christopher Lydon. (Core is a co-sponsor!) This is is first in a lecture series proposed as an annual event highlighting the importance of the humanities at the heart of the arts and sciences. Below are the details and Facebook event.
