I have a new short essay in the Pittsburgh Review of Books on Zohran Mamdani as viewed through his mother Mira Nair's films.
The opening paragraphs are as follows:
Zohran Mamdani, as most readers know by now, is the son of a filmmaker, Mira Nair. His parents met while she was working on Mississippi Masala (1992); his father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a professor of international affairs and anthropology who had lived through the events from the 1970s described in the film.
Zohran was born 34 years ago (October 1991), and his mother’s film was released only a few months afterwards (in the U.S., February 1992). Obviously, one shouldn’t read the politics of one person through the lens of their parents, as some pro-Israel groups have been attempting to do. And in a New York Times interview with both parents from June, Mahmood Mamdani made it a point to differentiate his own ideas and beliefs from his son’s: “He’s his own person,” he said. Strikingly, Mira Nair immediately jumped in to express a contrary point of view: “I don’t agree… Of course the world we live in, and what we write and film and think about, is the world that Zohran has very much absorbed.” I’m curious about what might happen if we take that seriously: What can we learn about Zohran’s approach to politics through his mother’s approach to filmmaking?
Admittedly, what Mamdani has done as a politician in his brief career really has no template or precedent, though he has often cited Michelle Wu in Boston as a model for the kind of Mayor he wants to become; one can also look at the insurgent, social-media fueled candidacy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 as a model as well. And in recent campaign videos, we have seen Zohran appearing with other senior role models like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But despite the novelty of Zohran’s impressive political campaign, I believe there are certain core ideas about ethics and life in multicultural societies in Mira Nair’s film that circulate in Zohran’s own approach to politics. To understand where he’s coming from, I would propose readers take some time and watch these two films.
The two films I’m going to talk about are Mississippi Masala (1992) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012). There are, of course, many other films of Nair’s I love, including Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake; I wrote a whole book about her films a few years ago! But these are the two that seem to speak the most to the moment we’re living in, as many of us are struggling to make sense of extreme anti-immigrant policies from the Trump administration leading to widespread ICE crackdowns, families being broken up, and subtle and not-so-subtle changes in the fabric of American society. Alongside that, many are grappling with the question of how to respond to the ongoing horror and tragedy in Gaza, including the Hamas attack of October 7th as well as the two years of vast killing and destruction by the Israeli army, funded and supported by the American military under both Biden and Trump.
Read the rest here.