ROUTES RATHER THAN ROOTS: HOME AND BELONGING IN LAILA LALAMI’S THE OTHER AMERICANS (2019)
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Date
2022-06
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Publisher
UNIVERSITY OF MOHAMED BOUDIAF
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The present research examines the issues of identity, displacement, otherness,
unhomeliness and belonging in Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans (2019). The
novel dramatizes the overshadowed and silenced stories of the displaced migrant
people in the life of the characters (nine characters) through the story of a Moroccan
migrant family whose hope of an American dream comes to break on the shores of a
reality of being othered after the father's Driss death; relegated to a lower status by the
white-dominated society. Throughout the novel, Driss and his wife Maryam, their
daughters Nora and Selma, Jeremy, The detective Coleman and Efrain are described
as being torn between the two worlds of their origins homeland and their host country.
Hence, the study aims at highlighting migrants struggle to find a new home and
belonging far from their countries of origin. Lalami scrutinises the anxiety of
belonging in The Other Americans stressing ideas of displacement, alienation, and
otherness. Lalami endeavours to investigate characters alienation and quest for
identity in the light of Homi Bhabha’s ideas and theories of hybridity. The study
analyses the impact of the displacement, unhomeliness, otherness and belonging on
the protagonist Driss and his family also the other characters in the novel. The present
study is divided into a general introduction, two chapters, the first chapter has
supplied the socio–historical context and theoretical framework of this research, the
second chapter has explored the dilemma of belonging in the novel and a general
conclusion. In the end, the research concludes that changing the home and land is
linked to the affiliation dilemma, and its impact is clear on immigrants who are
experiencing a dilemma of belonging and diaspora.
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Keywords
Keywords: displacement; hybridity; unhomeliness; disillusionment; othering; belonging; third space