The mothers of male politicians tend to be retrospectively cast as inspirational figures from the humble school of hard knocks. Think of Joe Biden’s eulogies to Jean Biden (“My mom used to always tell me, ‘Joey, no one is better than you’”) or Eric Adams describing his roots as a kid with learning disabilities from South Jamaica, Queens, next to a life-size portrait of his mother, Dorothy. Zohran Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair, cuts an altogether different figure: a decorated filmmaker, a trailblazing daughter of the Indian subcontinent, and a star in her own right who, not that long ago, was far more famous than her son. In this captivating profile of Nair’s life as a director and mother, New York’s Rebecca Traister shows how Nair practically groomed her only son to be the star politician he is today, from filling him with undaunted confidence to showing how to get one’s way in the world. As Nair told Rebecca, her credo is “Don’t show the struggle. My job is to make it look like I never had that struggle.”
—Ryu Spaeth, features editor, New York
