Two Novellas By Yae: A Moroccan in New York and Sea Drinkers (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France) - Hardcover

Youssouf Amine Elalamy, popularly referred to as YAE by Moroccans in the literary and artistic circles of the country, began writing in the late 1990s at the dawn of the New Morocco. In general, YAE's complete oeuvre, either as three-dimensional artwork, theater, or prose, is playful or primarily explores the quirkier side of what he calls the Moroccan personality. Brandishing his humanist and humorist pen, the author explores a human continuum that has become complicated and divided by the socio-political and cultural polarizations of East/West, Arab/French, traditionalist/modern, secular/religious, isolationist/global, and individual/collective... -- from the foreword by Valerie Orlando "Youssouf Amine Elalamy, popularly referred to as YAE by Moroccans in the literary and artistic circles of the country, began writing in the late 1990s at the dawn of the New Morocco. In general, YAE's complete oeuvre, either as three-dimensional artwork, theater, or prose, is playful or primarily explores the quirkier side of what he calls the Moroccan personality. Brandishing his humanist and humorist pen, the author explores a human continuum that has become complicated and divided by the socio-political and cultural polarizations of East/West, Arab/French, traditionalist/modern, secular/religious, isolationist/global, and individual/collective. -- from the foreword by Valerie Orlando

Two Novellas by YAE comprises two works by Youssouf Amine Elalamy, also known as YAE, translated from French into English for the first time. A Moroccan in New York tells the tale of a young man seeking to make sense of two cultures which seemingly could not be more opposite, yet, are on many levels, so much the same. Autobiographical, YAE's story is the compilation of the musings of a young man on a Fulbright grant in New York in the early 1990s. In particular, the work reveals multiple misconceptions and misunderstandings Americans have about Moroccans and, other foreigners. Sea Drinkers is a compelling story that reveals the hurdles faced by Moroccan emigrants who illegally try to cross the slim stretch of water in small boats between Morocco and Spain. The hundreds who attempt the dangerous crossing every year are known as the harraga, which in Arabic means "the burners." The Moroccans who embark must literally "burn" the bridges of their lives (their identity papers and passports), in order to clandestinely infiltrate into the countries across the water. These characters tell the tales of those who become stateless and who, more often than not, die untimely deaths in the waters between two continents (a distance of less than fifteen miles).