About the Book
Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction - Finalist for the 2025 Governor General's Literary Award in Translation - Finalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize
An unlikely literary friendship from the past sheds light on the radicalization of public debate around identity, race, and censorship.
In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron's guest house. They wrote during the day, then spent long evenings confiding in each other and talking about race and identity in America. During one of those memorable evenings, Baldwin is said to have convinced Styron to write, in the first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner near Styron's own Southern birthplace. Styron followed his friend's advice, and The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968--also creating outrage in part of the African American community.
More than sixty years later, the debates and controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonate. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers Baldwin and Styron's surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman, born in Canada to a Tunisian father and Québécois mother, and torn by the often unidimensional versions of her own identity put forth by today's politics, media, and society. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and censorship, and, especially, the means by which public debate around these topics is increasingly radicalized, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen--even in disagreement.
About the Author :
Mélikah Abdelmoumen was born in Chicoutimi in 1972. She lived in Lyon, France, from 2005 to 2017. She holds a PhD in literary studies from the Université de Montréal and has published many articles, short stories, novels, and essays, including Les désastrées (2013), Douze ans en France (2018), and Petite-Ville (2024). She worked as an editor with the Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature in Montreal until 2021. She was the editor-in-chief of Lettres québécoises, a Québec literary magazine, from 2021 to 2024. Baldwin, Styron, and Me is her tenth book (and the first to be translated).
Catherine Khordoc is a professor of French and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is the author of Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans la littérature contemporaine (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). She also considers herself in many ways a frontier-dweller.
Review :
Praise for Baldwin, Styron, and Me
"Baldwin, Styron, and Me is an intellectual reflection that serves as a valuable contribution to the current debates about race, equity and identity."
--Anita Snow, Associated Press
"In this insightful memoir, the first of her books to appear in English, Abdelmoumen reflects on race, ethnicity, cultural appropriation, and her own multiple identities . . . A thoughtful, timely contribution to a controversial debate."
--Kirkus Reviews
"[T]his is a fascinating meditation on how disparate writers can stimulate each others' creativity and on the pitfalls of cross-cultural art."
--Booklist
"Original, exceptional, thought-provoking."
--Midwest Book Review
"Abdelmoumen's work . . . demonstrates the good faith conversations being held within a cultural scene that is both local and transnational in its outlook."
--Amanda Perry, Literary Review of Canada
"Abdelmoumen's entanglement with Baldwin and Styron throughout the years distinguishes her retelling. The book unfurls as an intertextual love story, combining memoir, correspondence, dramatic monologues, and quotations from the authors' work . . . The formal innovation of Baldwin, Styron, and Me captures the risk inherent to both making art and forming relationships."
--Faith Paré, Montreal Review of Books
"What Abdelmoumen has written is important and very timely. It is also . . . wonderfully reassuring to read this book, about two men who overcame their ancestry and social differences to create a lasting friendship. They have lessons to teach us, if we choose to listen . . . An enthralling read of enormous value."
--Ottawa Review of Books
"Abdelmoumen's book suggests that failure might be productive, that risks need not always pay off to create value, that friction and disagreement can lead to necessary, ongoing conversations. By knitting together this literary history with her own personal experiences, Abdelmoumen has created something new and vital."
--Clementine Oberst, Miramichi Reader
"Pragmatic, emotional, timely, and urgent, Baldwin, Styron and Me is unlike anything I've read, and is just the sort of book that begs translation in as many languages as possible."
--Scout Magazine
[Baldwin, Styron and Me] is a valuable examination of certain points of dissension or disagreement ongoing in our culture."
--Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
"Mélikah Abdelmoumen has painted an intimate and compelling portrait of what it means to live on the frontier between opposing communities. She has also birthed a personal and courageous meditation on the unexpected and striking friendship between two great American writers. In this polarized world, Baldwin, Styron and Me stands out as a polished gem. It reminds us to meet and befriend our neighbours--all of them!"
--Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes
"What a joy it was to get to know Mélikah and her family through this book. It felt like visiting old friends. Through a personal lens Mélikah also reintroduces an old acquaintance in Baldwin, who I love and admire as deeply as her, and a less familiar character in Styron. In exploring this relationship between two writers, so different yet sharing the experience of writing, she reveals a new way to understand both this moment and our own relations. Intellectually engrossing and tenderly written this book is a balm for this time and a welcome visit with new and old relations."
--Jesse Wente, author of Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance
"Mélikah Abdelmoumen's richly informed writing gives real hope to a world divided in its ideological stances and political positions. She reminds us that if the grandson of a slave and the grandson of a slave owner can reach beyond the bounds of an unfettered, scantly imagined humanism to find common ground, respect, and friendship--who are we not to?"
--Okezie Nwoka, author of God of Mercy
"A truly relevant essay from one of the greatest Quebec thinkers of our time, who reflects on both the question of cultural appropriation and artistic freedom with great singularity and refreshing freedom."
--Radio-Canada
"In this rich and fascinating essay, Mélikah Abdelmoumen criticizes aggressive radicalism, advocating instead dialogue and empathy. With the help of Baldwin and Styron, the author allows us to see that dialogue is not only possible, but necessary."
--La Gazette de la Mauricie
