Introduction: Writing about Disaster amid One

• Published in: Studies in the novel 2020-12, Vol.52 (4), p.377-384
• Main Author: Desai, Gaurav
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anxiety; COVID-19; Fiction; Imperialism; International relations; Novels; Orientalism; Pandemics; Police brutality; Politics; Postcolonialism; Terrorism; Writing
• ISSN: 0039-3827; 1934-1512; 1934-1512
• DOI: 10.1353/sdn.2020.0052

The sense of fruitlessness of writing after (or in the midst of) a disaster, the necessity nonetheless of conforming to professional expectations and obligations, the numbness felt after watching the 24/7 coverage of an ongoing disaster, the difficulty of gauging the experience of someone reading one's writing at a temporal distance removed from the onset of the crisis, the anxiety and uncertainty of what is yet to come, and indeed even of one's own survival—these feelings haunt me as I write this introduction in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Rage at the incompetency at the US federal level to better manage and prepare for the pandemic not only in the present moment but also in not having had a robust public health infrastructure in the first place.1 Rage at the fact that, once again, the already vulnerable—often Black and brown people and the poor—who in many cases have not had the resources for long-term preventive healthcare, have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. [...]Ambreen Hai opens her essay on The Reluctant Fundamentalist as follows: "The attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent US backlash irreversibly changed global politics, international relations, and the macro and micro conditions of life, particularly for those whose lives became more precarious from ensuing developments At the end of the millennium, 9/11 marked a turning point, and a point of no return." [...]we need not go beyond the World Trade Center and its earlier 1993 bombing to remember the continuities.