Surviving the Sense of the Arab Family in the West: The Arab Moroccan Immigrant Family in Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans as a Case Study

The sense of the Arab family as a social and cultural construct in Western societies is doomed to fluctuation and ongoing metamorphosis due to the new circumstances dictated and crafted by Western culture. The latter's fierce pressure exerted on Arab immigrant families subverts these families' identity and culture from within. One manifestation, among others, of such subversion is the chasm that often happens between, on the one hand, first-generation Arab immigrants, and second and third-generation immigrants, on the other. This paper explores this often-overwhelming relationship between these immigrants. Also, it showcases the types of pressure that Western hegemony (through its culture and civilization) employs to culturally ‘tame' the Arab family. This paper follows textual and discourse analysis methods to critically read Laila Lalami's novel, The Other Americans (2019), principally through the characters of Maryam Guerraoui and her daughters, Nora and Salma. Would – or would not— the Arab family ‘go Western' is, thus, the pivotal concern of this paper. This paper shows that it is normal for Arab families to receive pressure from Western mainstream culture, yet it is abnormal not to resist such pressure to maintain the sense of the Arab family.