Revisiting Manhattan Music in the Time of COVID-19: Body Politics, Anti-Asian Racism and Negotiation of Ethnic Identity

ABSTRACT

The rise in COVID-19 cases has not only generated anxiety and uncertainty but has also caused an upsurge in anti-Asian racism all over the world. The racially motivated attacks have forced us to rethink the concept of migration, integration, and racism in a global context. In this paper, I look back at Meena Alexander’s Manhattan Music and relying on Arjun Appadurai’s critical theory in Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger I investigate the dynamics that go into making the dominant culture hostile towards immigrants and ethnic populations. Drawing a connection between my reading of the novel and the COVID-fueled racism, I debunk the myth of assimilation as a means of integration and attest that race and ethnicity still play crucial role in the politics of power. That is, despite the ethnic protagonists’ negotiation of their subjectivity, their ethnic body will continue to be victims of racial politics and used as scapegoats as long as white supremacy prevails and is considered normative. Revisiting Manhattan Music and rendering the connection between race, ethnicity and racism opens up avenues for critical rethinking and compels us to ever more consider the intersection of ethnic identity and race today in an era of global pandemic that has targeted Asian migrants in and beyond America.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• anti-Asian racism
• scapegoat
• ethnic subjectivity
• body politics
• white supremacy

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr. Melissa Merchant for her valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. Her suggestions have helped me improve the paper significantly. In addition, I would to thank Dr. Rahul Gairola for sharing the call for papers for this special issue with me. His guidance and support are greatly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Farzana Akhter

Farzana Akhter is Associate Professor of English at East West University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Arkansas, U.S.A. Her areas of interest include contemporary American Ethnic and Immigrant literatures, immigrant nostalgia, and women in Bangladesh Liberation War. She is also the Assistant Editor of East West Journal of Humanities. Her major works have appeared in South Asian Review, Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, and The Brecht Yearbook. She has recently published a writing on Bangladeshi war movies and women in In the Crossfire of History: Women's War Resistance Discourse in the Global South (Rutgers University Press).