Locating Subaltern Resistance and Resilience in Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6436717 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wael J Salam (0000-0003-3786-8607, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 89-105 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Middle East Women s Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1552-5864 • E-ISSN: 1558-9579 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/15525864-11575483 |
| OpenAlex | W4406242486 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
This article explores the thematic and aesthetic depictions of the colonized in Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account (2014) by extending the postcolonial theory of the subaltern. This Moroccan American novel reconstructs the colonial history of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest narrated in Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition by giving voice to the slave Mustafa/Estebanico and other subaltern peoples, including female slaves and Native Americans. The protagonist Mustafa asserts his Muslim, Moroccan identity, which has been erased by Cabeza de Vaca’s chronicle. He also makes the reader attend to the colonized silenced by the colonizer’s hegemonic discourse. The Moor’s Account therefore opens new possibilities for rewriting the history of subaltern groups, their resilience, and their local forms of resistance to colonial powers, thus extending our understanding of subalternity
Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · CONQUEST · Hegemony · Identity (music · Literature · Political science · Postcolonialism (international relations · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Subaltern · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Law
Susan Darraj's The Inheritance of Exile
‘Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God’ diaspora, memory, and historiography from the margin in The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami
Illness and the Development of Master-Slave Relations in Morrison’s A Mercy and Lalami’s The Moor’s Account
Postcolonialism
Is the subaltern resilient? Notes on agency and neoliberal subjects
Can the Subaltern Be Heard
The empire writes back
Listening to the Subaltern
Rethinking Subaltern Resistance
History as Narration
Inter/Nationalism
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
Reconstructing the story of Mustafa/Estebanico
Granada
Soul making
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |