The Moor's account - bookrastinating.com

323 pages

English language

Published Dec. 3, 2014

ISBN:: 978-0-307-91166-7
OCLC Number:: 864676623

Brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America--a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record. In 1527, the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a crew of six hundred men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernán Cortés. But from the moment the Narváez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril--navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition's treasurer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; a young explorer named Andrés Dorantes de Carranza; and Dorantes's Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four …

Brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America--a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record. In 1527, the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a crew of six hundred men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernán Cortés. But from the moment the Narváez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril--navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition's treasurer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; a young explorer named Andrés Dorantes de Carranza; and Dorantes's Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four survivors would go on to make a journey across America that would transform them from proud conquis-tadores to humble servants, from fearful outcasts to faith healers.

1 edition

SocProf reviewed The Moor's account by Laila Lalami

Review of "The Moor's account" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is such a great novel. It takes its premise from historical facts: the ill-fated Narvaez expedition, chronicled by Cabeza de Vaca, and titled "The Account". The main character is actually the fourth survivor of the expedition, a Moor (re)named Estebanico. Since nothing is really known about this person, in the book, he becomes the narrator of the alternative history to the accounts from the Castilian survivors. So, the novel follows the tribulation of the Moor, from his childhood in Azemmour (Morocco), to New Spain, the progressive decimation of the expedition, and the eight years the survivors spent with various native tribes, and finally, their return to Spanish society in America. So, this is a narrative from a non-privileged figure that stands as fictional alternative to the (probably also somewhat fictional) narrative provided by Cabeza de Vaca. After all, writing history is a matter of privilege.
Highly recommended.

Subjects

Fiction
Spanish
Early accounts to 1600
Discovery and exploration

Places

Morocco
America