Dear dad: an homage to Laila Lalami and her Moroccan American Dream

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.