The postsecular feminist turn in Moroccan diaspora studies: Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans as a case study

This article contributes to debates on religion in Moroccan Diaspora Studies by investigating Islam as a lived experience through which Moroccan female expatriates negotiate piety and assert agency within diasporic spaces. Using a postsecular feminist framework, it examines how Moroccan diaspora women navigate the intersections of the secular and the sacred, and of the traditional and the modern. This article proposes a postsecular feminist turn in Moroccan Diaspora Studies, where the intersections of faith, gender, secularism, diaspora, and identity have received limited attention. Centering its analysis on Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans, the study argues that the novel complicates existing understandings of Moroccan female diasporic religious identity by advancing a postsecular feminist reading of faith that foregrounds religious hybridity and the intersections of faith, reason, and gender. In doing so, the analysis highlights the potential of postsecular feminism as a productive framework for interpreting Moroccan transnational narratives.