![]() 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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