Laila Lalami, will read from her latest book, The Moor’s Account. She is the author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son and teaches Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. The Moor’s Account is a work of historical fiction, the imagined memoirs of the New World’s first explorer of African descent, a Moroccan slave known as Estebanico. Estebanico (1500 – 1539) was enslaved as a youth and traveled on the famed Narváez expedition in 1527 to Florida in search of gold. After one year only four of the six hundred men remained: Estebanico and the Spanish explorers Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes de Carranza and Castillo Maldonado. They traveled across the unfamiliar continent for nearly eight years, living with Native Americans until finally reaching Mexico City in 1536. This novel recreates Estebanico’s experience.
“Laila Lalami has created an unforgettable drama of wonder out of the gaps and silences in the master narratives of colonial conquests. She gives name to the unnamed; agency to the sidelined; she takes them from footnotes into the footprints that make up the pages of this remarkable novel. Lalami gives voice to the silences of history.” [Ngugi wa Thiong’o]
Wednesday, October 8 at 6:30pm to 7:30pm | Griffin Hall, Rm. 3 Sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages, Africana Studies, American Studies and the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
