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Abstract
In this article, I examine fatherhood in Laila Lalami’s first two novels, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son. I trace a set of questions and literary interventions related to what I refer to as the Moroccan American Dream along two axes: first, the political implications of choosing English as one’s primary method of self-expression in a transnational Moroccan context and second, the substitution of the so-called European Eldorado (and the economic opportunity it implies) with an American Eldorado in the Moroccan imaginary. By taking up these questions, I reveal the urgency of pivoting our scholarly discussion of literature, as it pertains to North African migration, to account for a broader and more inclusive analysis of increasingly diverse migratory patterns. My analysis connects characters in pairs and shows how each of the characters has a counterpart. It is through a reading of each set of counterparts that the role of the Moroccan American Dream among Moroccan youth becomes apparent, as well as the intergenerational differences that exist between youth and their fathers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Referred to as Hope throughout this essay.
2 See Calargé for a description of how migration to Europe is imagined as an entry into paradise (3–4).
3 Examples include Driss R. Temsamani and Mohamed Fandi, who also wrote in English.
4 Although this article focuses on two novels, questions related to this argument can also be found in Lalami’s other two books, The Moor’s Account (2014) and The Other Americans (2019).
5 I would like to thank the anonymous external reviewers of this article, whose feedback on the contours of the article was invaluable to its present form.
6 See, for example, Alami (2012).
7 The test is taken by 2.3 million individuals annually and is the primary examination method used to determine the ability of a non-English speaker to succeed in an Anglophone educational environment.
8 In the 18th and 19th-century Russia, members of high society spoke French and Russian.
9 As we will see below, Lalami’s later work complicates the possibility this could be achieved with Amal, a character in Secret Son.
10 See Flesler (2008).
11 At the time he wrote Ex-Centric Migrations: Europe and the Maghreb in Mediterranean Cinema, Literature and Music, Hakim Abderrezak maintained that Lalami was the only woman author to write about clandestine migration from Morocco to Europe (57).
12 Noura’s goals are relatively unknown because the story prioritizes her father’s position.
13 Examples include Nina Bouraoui’s La voyeuse interdite (1991), Malika Mokeddem’s L’Interdite (1993), and Leïla Marouane’s La jeune fille et la mère (2005).
14 For a more extensive study on the role of gender in clandestine migration, see Mehta (2014).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jocelyn A. Frelier
Dr. Jocelyn Frelier is an ACES Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University – College Station. She completed her doctorate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures. Her research interests include gender, family, migration, North African Studies and the Mediterranean, more broadly.