Good Immigrants and Ungrateful Refugees: Reading Euripides’ Children of Heracles in the Era of COVID-19

Abstract: This article argues that stereotypical representations of Asian immigrants in America—and the author’s experience as the Chinese-American child of immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic—offer a fresh framework for understanding the treatment of suppliants in Euripides’ Children of Heracles . Approaching Heracles’ family through Agamben and Castoriadis’ framework of “thinkable figures,” the article argues that Macaria and Iolaus can be read as “model minorities,” while Alcmene is presented as a “perpetual foreigner.” The contrast between the idealized suppliant and the inassimilable immigrant expresses anxieties about accepting refugees into mythological Athens that reverberate through American history into our current moment.