Re-evaluating Mohamed Choukri's Autobiography Al-Khubz al-Ḥāfi: The Oppression of Morocco's Amazigh Population, the Ṣaʿālīk, and Backlash

Abstract

In the 1990s, Mohamed Choukri's controversial autobiography, Al-Khubz al-ḥāfī (For Bread Alone), was re-evaluated as a social criticism of poverty. This article argues that Al-Khubz should also be re-evaluated in the context of minority politics. Choukri, an Amazigh author, was committed to redressing the oppression and linguistic discrimination by Morocco's Arabs against its Amazigh minority. There were no Amazigh models for him to emulate, so he used literary devices to create an alternative identity mediated through the dominant language of literary Arabic and the tradition of Arabic autobiography. He modeled his autobiographical self after a group of pre-Islamic brigand poets, outsiders to society known as ṣaʿālīk. His choice provides the key to understanding Choukri's intersubjective negotiation of Amazigh identity.