2008 Woodie Awards
Laila Lalami Speaks on Illegal Immigration
Omar Rachid
Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: News
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Moroccan author Laila Lalami visited Rollins recently. She spent nearly a week at the College to promote her new book "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits." The event was hosted by the Departments of Anthropology and English.
On Tuesday, October 2, she held a lecture at Tiedke Hall to discuss her new book on four Moroccans who risked their lives by crossing the perilous and heavily-guarded straits of Gibraltar in order to illegally enter Spain. This narrative is released while Congress is trying to pass new laws on illegal immigration, a problem shared by both Spain and the United States.
A native from Rabat, Morocco, she is truly an international fi gure having earned her BA in English from the Mohammed V University in Rabat, her Masters in London, and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Lalami's book was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese. She has published works in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times.
It was from these same newspapers which inspired her to write her first fiction book about four illegal immigrants.
After having read the news of a capsized lifeboat holding fifteen Moroccans two miles
away from the Spanish coast. "I was immediately drawn to these immigrants' stories, even though they were seemingly so different from my own," said Lalami. They were trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea through the closest points between Spain and Morocco which is a little under ten miles.
During the lecture she offered an interesting perspective on language and of her passion for linguistics, in which she received a doctorate degree.
She explained how in Morocco French and Arabic are taught simultaneously up to high school but always with the colonial baggage of French as the superior language.
A member of the audience asked about the translation of her works and that opened up a whole other debate. She quoted Dr. Roger Allen from the University of Pennsylvania in saying that there are only around 20 people in the world qualified to do a near-perfect Arabic-English translation. Written in English, her book has been translated to many European languages without her consent,
On Tuesday, October 2, she held a lecture at Tiedke Hall to discuss her new book on four Moroccans who risked their lives by crossing the perilous and heavily-guarded straits of Gibraltar in order to illegally enter Spain. This narrative is released while Congress is trying to pass new laws on illegal immigration, a problem shared by both Spain and the United States.
A native from Rabat, Morocco, she is truly an international fi gure having earned her BA in English from the Mohammed V University in Rabat, her Masters in London, and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Lalami's book was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese. She has published works in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times.
It was from these same newspapers which inspired her to write her first fiction book about four illegal immigrants.
After having read the news of a capsized lifeboat holding fifteen Moroccans two miles
away from the Spanish coast. "I was immediately drawn to these immigrants' stories, even though they were seemingly so different from my own," said Lalami. They were trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea through the closest points between Spain and Morocco which is a little under ten miles.
During the lecture she offered an interesting perspective on language and of her passion for linguistics, in which she received a doctorate degree.
She explained how in Morocco French and Arabic are taught simultaneously up to high school but always with the colonial baggage of French as the superior language.
A member of the audience asked about the translation of her works and that opened up a whole other debate. She quoted Dr. Roger Allen from the University of Pennsylvania in saying that there are only around 20 people in the world qualified to do a near-perfect Arabic-English translation. Written in English, her book has been translated to many European languages without her consent,
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