ABSTRACT
Set in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the summer of 1990, Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala tells the story of the romance between Mina, a young Indian immigrant from Uganda, and Demetrius, an African American and native Mississippian. Mississippi Masala thus insists on the inescapably hybrid character of postcolonial immigrant experience. Mississippi Masala's double narrative is not the defect that critics take it for, but a sign of the scope of its ambitions. The differences that divide Mississippi Masala's unlikely couple provoke different responses in the Indian and African American communities, and, in this film's judgment, to the discredit of the former. In focusing on Mina's attempt to forge a romantic liaison with Demetrius, Mississippi Masala brings a feminist perspective to its depiction of the struggles facing this postcolonial, immigrant woman. Mississippi Masala shows that although ethnic difference can be an obstacle for its unlikely couple, it need not be.
