Greetings bibliophiles,
I stayed up late Thursday night finishing Zadie Smith's Swing Time, a sprawling rumination on privilege and appropriation and the complicated dance between the two.
The story is told from the point-of-view of an unnamed narrator, a biracial thirtysomething disgraced former personal assistant, and weaves through her past and present relationships with a cast of complex characters. There's her mother, a fiercely intelligent, but aloof, black woman whose political aspirations take precedence over her personal relations. Talented, self-assured, but ultimately tragic, Tracey, another biracial girl with an indulgent mother from the housing estate across from the narrator's, whom the narrator meets and begins a complicated friendship in a community dance class. International pop superstar, Aimee, who believes that if all of the world's woes were met with her determination and focus, they'd be easily solved, and therefore founds a girls' school in a rural village in an unnamed (The Gambia) West African country. And vibrant, loquacious Hawa, a teacher who is charged with helping the narrator assess the needs of the girls in this village. In each of these relationships, the narrator is the Ginger to the more decisive woman's Fred; influenced and led, rarely making decisions on her own.
These characters also seem to complement each other, as dance partners should. The bright, but insecure narrator who is a mediocre dancer, but has a lovely voice complements Tracey, who is a confident, natural dancer, but cannot sing and consistently struggles to move beyond the estate despite her talents. They even are opposites in parentage; Tracey's mother is white and devoted to her, but her black father is an abusive criminal while the narrator's mother is a black woman driven to change her community and her father is a loving but unmotivated white man.
The two maternal figures, the narrator's mother and Aimee, also seem to be two sides of the same coin. Both are driven, somewhat aloof, determined to make changes in the world around them, but at the expense of forming loving, lasting relationships with those around them.
Smith also raises the issue of appropriation. In the first chapter, the narrator stops by a theatre to watch a famous director talk about a clip from the 1936 film, Swing Time, in which Fred Astaire does a solo dance, "Bojangles of Harlem," in blackface. In another scene, the narrator and Tracey are filmed at a childhood birthday party mimicking the lascivious moves of Aimee, who is sort of a mishmash of Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and other 80s pop divas. Aimee, in turn, appropriates the local dance moves of the community in which she builds her school while the locals show off televisions and smartphones (in various states, working and broken).
What does it mean to appropriate and is it ever acceptable? Who owns cultural artifacts? These are some of the questions Smith seems to want us to ask ourselves.
Smith's writing is tight and engaging, and it's easy to see that she's been influenced by the great authors of the past (e.g. Dickens) whose works were serialized; her chapters are succinct and propel the reader forward at a good clip. At over 400 pages, I was a little hesitant to get started but ultimately finished the book in just four days.
Swing Time is my first Zadie Smith novel, and I will definitely be reading others. I found her writing to be very engaging, the characters multifaceted and complex, and the plot compelling and layered. While there are several issues being addressed, Smith is never preachy. Multiple perspectives are given, and it's up to the reader to really address their own feelings and rationalize them.
If you give Swing Time a read, let me know, I'd love to discuss it with you.
Happy reading!
PS The thots over at the podcast, Food 4 Thot discuss Swing Time in episode 7. Follow the link to give it a listen.
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