Events

[LIT] Laila Lalami is coming to town Wednesday, November 9 on the strength of her 2014 book, The Moor’s Account, the imagined memoir of the very real explorer Estebanico, a man considered to be one the first Africans to set foot on North America in 1527. Part of an expedition that had included over 300 souls, Estebanico’s status as explorer was solidified when he found himself one of only four survivors in the first year, and went on to traverse the Southwest and “discover” New Mexico. Appearing at Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel series at Kleinhan’s Music Hall, Lalami’s fictive account of the North African slave-cum-explorer dives into the heart of a man who unwittingly blazed a path for African and Muslim people onto a new continent already inhabited by a native population, a question we are left with today in America’s turbulent election season which has repeatedly claimed stake over what is and what is not “American.” How does a person like Estebanico, doubly estranged from the Native Americans and his European captives alike, negotiate his outsiderness? Lalami knows a thing or two about the process. Born and educated in Morocco and now working and living in California, reflecting on Donald Trump’s attack on the Khan family, Lalami wrote for The Nation in September: “The message to Muslims could not be clearer: We are guilty until proven innocent. Conditional citizens are treated with fear and suspicion. We are expected to demonstrate our allegiance and offer blind support. But the true measure of patriotism is not silence or acquiescence; it is dissent and debate.”