Because postcolonial studies focuses on the historical impacts of cross-cultural assimilation after World War II, it is closely linked to determinism, the notion according to which each event has a historical antecedent causing the existence of the present event. In the novel White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith, we see many characters struggling to balance the acceptance of postcolonialism with their own desire to predestinate the lives of other human beings. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay One of the main tenets of postcolonialism is that the past is expressed through the present, or as Samad so eloquently puts it to Archibald, “the past is expressed through the present.” generations [...] talk to each other” (100). The generational discourse is embodied by Alsana and Clara as they search for a suitable place to raise their children. Alsana, believing “that living near green spaces [is] morally beneficial for young people” (52), chose a house along the “High Road,” a location between the urban ghetto of Willesden and Gladstone Park, “ named after the Liberal Party. Prime Minister” (52). Clara, who is also a first-generation immigrant, is looking for “a nice house somewhere halfway between the trees and the shit” (40). Clara and Alsana's identical methodology for home-searching is a way of using their past experiences – both in London and in their respective English colonial states – to shape not only their current lives as impending mothers, but also "l 'future history' (383) of their lives. their children: Magid, Millat and Irie. Alsana and Clara's search for home, for a "neutral place" (383), is not only spatially significant, but also philosophically significant in that they seamlessly transition between their past histories and present, as well as the “future history” of their children, thus metonymically paralleling the structure of postcolonial assimilation. With the dismantling of colonial possessions after World War II, immigrants from typically peripheral countries were brought into the mainstream of international settlement, making place of birth relatively irrelevant in the individual's ability to overcome challenges. social obstacles. The fact that Clara and Alsana attempt to connect the physical features of their home country with middle-class English suburban life, however, shows that they are not just connecting colony and colonizer - an indication of their postcolonial understanding of globalism and of assimilation - but that they also attempt to predestinate the lives of their children through place-specific child rearing, an apparent contradiction and neglect of the fundamental tenets of postcolonialism. By prophetically defining their children's lives through place, Alsana and Clara corrupt the postcolonial world. the idea that it is the past, and not the spatial enslavement of their children's future lives, that guides the present. Samad further denies postcolonialism by sending Magid to Bangladesh in order to rid his son of English culture, once again setting a precedent for the location of his life as opposed to his life story, as well as an attempt to predetermine the life of another. human being. Magid's spatial discontinuity with Millat only further illustrates postcolonialism's dominance over Samad, Alsana, and Clara's predetermination over their children's lives, as Millat and Magid are "bound together as the..