Moor's Account (Lalami)

The Moor's Account 
Laila Lalami, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804170628


Summary
In these pages, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America: Mustafa al-Zamori, called Estebanico.

The slave of a Spanish conquistador, Estebanico sails for the Americas with his master, Dorantes, as part of a danger-laden expedition to Florida. Within a year, Estebanico is one of only four crew members to survive.

As he journeys across America with his Spanish companions, the Old World roles of slave and master fall away, and Estebanico remakes himself as an equal, a healer, and a remarkable storyteller. His tale illuminates the ways in which our narratives can transmigrate into history—and how storytelling can offer a chance at redemption and survival. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1968
• Where—Rabat, Morocco
• Education—B.A., Universite Mohammed V; M.A., University College of London; Ph.D.,
   University of Southern California
• Awards—American Book Award
• Currently—teaches at the University of California, Riverside


Laila Lalami is a Moroccan American novelist and essayist. She was born and raised in Rabat, Morocco, where she earned her B.A. in English from Universite Mohammed V. In 1990, she received a British Council fellowship to study in England, earning her M.A. in Linguistics at University College London.

Lalami moved to the U.S. in 1992, and completed a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Southern California. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Writing
Lalami began writing fiction and nonfiction in English in 1996. Her literary criticism, cultural commentary, and opinion pieces have appeared in the Boston Globe, Boston Review, Los Angeles Times, Nation, New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Beast, and elsewhere.
 
Her debut collection of stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was released in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into six languages. Her first novel, Secret Son (2009), was longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Her second novel The Moor's Account (2014) is based on Estevanico, the historic first black explorer of America and one of four survivors of the 1527 Narvaez expedition. The book won an American Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and nominated for the Man Booker Prize.

Lalami has received an Oregon Literary Arts grant and a Fulbright Fellowship. She was selected in 2009 by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/20/2015.)

Book Reviews
Feels at once historical and contemporary.... For Lalami, storytelling is a primal struggle over power between the strong and the weak, between good and evil, and against forgetting.... Lalami sees the story [of Estebanico] as a form of moral and spiritual instruction that can lead to transcendence.
New York Times Book Review


Estebanico is a superb storyteller, capable of sensitive character appraisals and penetrating ethnographic detail.
Wall Street Journal


[A] rich novel based on an actual, ill-fated 16th century Spanish expedition to Florida.... Offers a pungent alternative history that muses on the ambiguous power of words to either tell the truth or reshape it according to our desires.
Los Angeles Times


Compelling.... Necessary.... Laila Lalami’s mesmerizing The Moor’s Account presents us a historical fiction that feels something like a plural totality....a narrative that braids points of view so intricately that they become one even as we’re constantly reminded of the separate and often contrary strands that render the whole.
Los Angeles Review of Books


A bold and exhilarating bid to give a real-life figure muzzled by history the chance to have his say in fiction.
San Francisco Chronicle


Meticulously researched and inventive.... Those interested in the history of the Spanish colonization of the Americas will find much to like in The Moor’s Account, as will lovers of good yarns of faraway lands and times.
Seattle Times


Excellent historical fiction.... The way the Moor’s account differs from the Spaniards is amazing. It’s a play on perspective in more ways than one.
Ebony


An exciting tale of wild hopes, divided loyalties, and highly precarious fortunes.
New Yorker


Stunning.... The Moor’s Account sheds light on all of the possible the New World exploration stories that didn’t make history.
Huffington Post
 

Lalami's second novel is historical fiction of the first-order, a gripping tale of Spanish exploration in the New World set in the years 1527 to 1536, as told by a Muslim slave. Meticulously researched.... [t]his is a colorful but grim tale of Spanish exploration and conquest, marked by brutality, violence, and indifference to the suffering of native peoples.
Publishers Weekly


Assured, lyrical imagining of the life of one of the first African slaves in the New World—a native, like Lalami, of Morocco and, like her, a gifted storyteller.... Adding a new spin to a familiar story, Lalami offers an utterly believable, entertainingly told alternative to the historical record. A delight.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Moor's Account:

1. What role does money—and the pursuit of money—play in this book? Early on, Estebanico's father warns him that "trade would open the door to greed and greed was an inconsiderate guest; it would bring its evil relations with it." What are the ways in which that prediction plays out in the novel?

2. Why does Estebanico sell himself into slavery?

3. Once a slave, Estebanico is taken to Spain where he is stripped of his name, Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori. What is the significance of that act—symbolically in the novel, as well as psychologically/spiritually in real life? What does it mean to deprive someone of his/her name? How does losing his name affect Estebanico?

4. Laila Lalami is concerned about the role that Arabs, Africans, and Muslims played in founding the New World. Why were people of color—non-Europeans—left out of historical accounts of New World discovery? How does the author develop her ideas of omission, particularly near the end of the novel when Estebanico finds the wooden charm in the shape of a hand?

5. In what way does Estebanico's account of the expedition differ from the official version by Cabeza de Vaca? What was omitted from the "official" version—and why?

6. Follow up to Question 5: Estebanico equates written records with power. What might he mean?

7. This story is very much about atonement. How does Estebanico remake himself? What events led to his desire to redeem himself? Talk about the way that Lalami portrays the Castilians as opposed to Moors and Native Americans? Why are Europeans seemingly beyond redemption in this story?

8. Why does Estebanico decide to write his own account of the expedition? Consider his thinking that "Maybe if our experiences, in all of their glorious, magnificent colors, were somehow added up, they would lead us to the blinding light of the truth." Keeping that passage in mind, talk about storytelling as a spiritual endeavor.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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