The paper looks at the ways gender is related to the identities of the characters in Zadie Smith’s novels White Teeth and On Beauty. It argues that there are different types of assimilation in the novels. One is to form a new identity by rediscovering tradition or completely breaking up with the tradition along with assuming a new identity in accordance to the new environment. The other way of assimilation is based on hybridity and syncreticity, thus a new identity is keeping the tradition as well as accepting the new reality. The main assumption of the paper is that there is a link between the male characters in the novels with the first model of assimilation, whereas the female characters are linked to the second model of assimilation.