![]() ![]() Nora tells us that, back then, her mother turned to the Quran for solace. In the aftermath of 9/11, their business, Aladdin Donuts, was torched in a hate crime. “My father was killed on a spring night four years ago,” Nora Guerraoui says, “while I sat in the corner booth of a new bistro in Oakland.” Her parents, Mohammed Driss and Maryam, immigrants from Morocco, have been living near Joshua Tree National Park for 35 years. They share, too, a deep attachment to the specific landscape of the Mojave Desert. They all face obstacles to stable employment, are alienated from their neighbors and have a strong sense of being misunderstood not only by society but by their families. ![]() In fact, Lalami’s nine speakers have much in common. ![]() This is a powerful setup, raising the question of whether anyone feels that today’s America is one to which he or she belongs. Perhaps surprisingly, all of the novel’s speakers - regardless of race, class, gender, political affiliation, legal status or place of birth - see themselves as outsiders to mainstream American identity. Set in the towns of the Mojave Desert, the novel is narrated by nine different characters. ![]() The title of Laila Lalami’s fourth novel, “The Other Americans,” perfectly sums up a unified disunity: an America suspicious of its own body politic. ![]()
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