LAILA
LALAMI
In the award-winning The Moor’s Account, Laila Lalami recounts the fictional memories of America’s first black explorer: a Moroccan slave whose testimony was never recorded. In the author’s skillful hands, the memories and experiences of the obscure traveler show us how stories can become history and how the oral tradition of the unsung heroes teaches lessons about life, survival and freedom.
“But a voice inside me kept saying no — not everything. I still had something left. My story. I traveled to Indian Country and witnessed many things that my companions chose to revise, embellish, or suppress. What they altered, distorted, or left out was the very heart of our story: the part that could not be explained, only told. I could tell it. I could set right all that had been told wrongly. I had begun writing my own account. For every lie I had heard spoken about the imperial expedition that brought me to the ends of the earth, I would tell the truth…”
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