Chandler Museum Book Club: The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
Staff at Chandler Museum and Chandler Public Library have come together to choose a mix of fiction and non-fiction that expand on topics from current and future exhibitions at Chandler Museum.
This book pairs well with the exhibition, The Newest Americans on view through January 18, 2026.
Connect with other readers during in-person discussions led by Museum Curator Kristine Clark.
About The Other Americans by Laila Lalami:
From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Moor's Account, here is a timely and powerful novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant--at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.
Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant living in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow, Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora's and an Iraq War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
As the characters--deeply divided by race, religion, and class--tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss's family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, messy and unpredictable, is born.
Check out the audiobook from Chandler Public Library: The Other Americans