Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami’s latest, The Other Americans, is equal parts family saga, love story and crime novel. Here’s why you should be reading this tour de force.
Styled as a 16th-century travelogue, Laila Lalami’s Pulitzer finalist, The Moor’s Account, comprises the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America, a Moroccan slave whose story had fallen through canonical annals. Her first collection of short stories, Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits, follows the gruelling tale of four Moroccan immigrants seeking a promised land on European shores. In a note in her debut novel she recalls being inspired by a report she read: “...there was even a slang term in Moroccan Arabic for these migrants— harragas, meaning ‘those who burn’… I was immediately drawn to these stories, even though they were seemingly so different from my own.”
Lalami has been giving a voice, frame of context and legacy to the lost, forgotten and almost unseen for a while now. “Being a Moroccan immigrant in America has played a big part in shaping who I am as a person and, therefore, what I write. I often look at things from two perspectives, as an insider and as outsider,” she explains. She is also part of the contemporary feminist writer universe inhabited by the likes of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Zadie Smith, Fatima Bhutto and Elif Shafak, in which Lalami has individualised the immigrant tale into a more refined and specific world of words, especially timely in the era of walls and immigrant internment camps. Her latest novel, The Other Americans, carries on the tradition and yet seems her most personal yet.
HOME AND THE WORLD
この記事は VOGUE India の March 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は VOGUE India の March 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Breathe In, Breathe Out
A powerful tool to help you master your nervous system or another biohacking buzzword? SIMONE DHONDY explores the inhalations and exhalations of breathwork
Red Pill, Blue Pill
India's nutraceutical industry is booming thanks to advanced technology, distrust of the medical system and rising vanity. With multivitamins becoming purer and more effective, NIDHI GUPTA finds out if supplements have become the new serum
Sign of the times
No longer do you need to have an answer to, \"What is the significance of this?\" when people point to your new tattoo. ARMAN KHAN discovers that everything is on the table when you get inked temporarily
Return to form
Watching the world's most elite athletes deliver the best performances of their careers rekindled SONAKSHI SHARMA's own love for sports
Dimple, All Day
YOU MAY HAVE WATCHED HER ON THE BIG SCREEN FOR OVER FIVE DECADES, BUT DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF ASSUMING THAT YOU KNOW DIMPLE KAPADIA.
MUSIC, TAKE CONTROL
As someone who had always sought safety in numbers, ALIZA FATMA often wondered what her own company would feel like. The answer arrived unexpectedly when she attended her first-ever music festival, one of the largest in the world, all alone
Let it grow
When we think of hardworking farmers toiling in India's scorching heat, we often think of men, the sweat on their brow, the sinews in their arms. JYOTI KUMARI speaks to four women who are championing the invisible female labour that keeps these fields running
YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
When armless archer Sheetal Devi set her sights on the Paralympic Games this year, she knew she had a tough journey ahead of her. Luckily, her mother was with her every step of the way.
Beauty and the feast
The appeal of Indian weddings has always been in a sprawling spread. For additional bragging rights, Aditi Dugar recommends going beyond designer tablecloths and monogrammed napkins.
Sweet serendipity
From a scavenger hunt-inspired proposal to a Moroccan-themed baraat, Malvika Raj and Armaan Rai's love story prioritised playfulness throughout their blended celebrations.
