“Stick[ing] to their own kind”: Melancholia and/as Anti-Black Racism in Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the relationship between grief and anti-Black racism in diasporic Indian communities. While such racisms are often theorized as an effect of colonial economic structures, I consider the affective dimensions of such racism. How are the anti-Black attitudes of diasporic Indians bound up in the trauma of migration and in the grief that arises from living under white supremacy? Focusing on Mira Nair's 1991 film Mississippi Masala and its specific depiction of anti-Black racism, I argue that melancholic grief in particular fundamentally structures the formation and circulation of racism within diasporic Indian communities.