Family, Memory And The Burden Of Cultural Inheritance In Zadie Smith’s Prose

Abstract

This article explores the intertwined roles of family, memory, and cultural inheritance in Zadie Smith’s major prose works, arguing that Smith uses familial relationships and mnemonic structures to examine how cultural legacies-especially those shaped by postcolonial migration and multicultural contexts-are transmitted, contested, and reimagined. Integrating narrative theory and postcolonial frameworks, the study demonstrates how Smith’s fiction portrays memory as both a personal and collective construct that mediates cultural inheritance, shaping identity formation across generations within families.