Routes Rather Than Roots: Home And Belonging In Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans (2019)

Résumé: ABSTRACT The present research examines the issues of identity, displacement, otherness, unhomeliness and belonging in Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans (2019). The novel dramatizes the overshadowed and silenced stories of the displaced migrant people in the life of the characters (nine characters) through the story of a Moroccan migrant family whose hope of an American dream comes to break on the shores of a reality of being othered after the father's Driss death; relegated to a lower status by the white-dominated society. Throughout the novel, Driss and his wife Maryam, their daughters Nora and Selma, Jeremy, The detective Coleman and Efrain are described as being torn between the two worlds of their origins homeland and their host country. Hence, the study aims at highlighting migrants struggle to find a new home and belonging far from their countries of origin. Lalami scrutinises the anxiety of belonging in The Other Americans stressing ideas of displacement, alienation, and otherness. Lalami endeavours to investigate characters alienation and quest for identity in the light of Homi Bhabha’s ideas and theories of hybridity. The study analyses the impact of the displacement, unhomeliness, otherness and belonging on the protagonist Driss and his family also the other characters in the novel. The present study is divided into a general introduction, two chapters, the first chapter has supplied the socio–historical context and theoretical framework of this research, the second chapter has explored the dilemma of belonging in the novel and a general conclusion. In the end, the research concludes that changing the home and land is linked to the affiliation dilemma, and its impact is clear on immigrants who are experiencing a dilemma of belonging and diaspora.

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