The Bibliophile: There’s no box for a detail like this on a census
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Photo: Front and back covers of Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc. Designed by Ingrid Paulson.
Introducing Mélikah Abdelmoumen’s Baldwin, Styron, and Me
As a reader, as a human, I’ve always been attracted to stories or ideas that are neither one thing nor the other, that walk, out of inclination or obligation, a fine line between taken-for-granted assumptions and identities. Perhaps, in part, this is a result of coming from the places I do, the places I’ve called home: these smaller, industrial, working-class Rust Belt towns dismissed by almost everyone else in the country, which are a very short distance from the American border. Growing up, I had no idea that we did things differently down here, that, out of some sort of alchemical mixture of geography, history, landscape, and radio and television signals, we southern Ontarians had developed as distinct an identity as had Canadians from places where theirs are more readily acknowledged, whether it be Newfoundland or Quebec or Alberta. I remember Fred Eaglesmith once telling me that there was something about how American radio waves carried across Lake Ontario when he was growing up that made it easier for him to tune into the country and bluegrass stations from Kentucky and Tennessee than it was to receive the Toronto signals from barely an hour down the road. This accident helped shape him into the man (and the musician) that he became, and bred an affinity for the fields and mountains of Appalachia over the straight, puritanical streets of Canada’s biggest city. There’s no box for a detail like this on a census. And yet it can be everything. There’s a local writer who once pitched me on a book (unfortunately never finished) whose main thesis was that the people of this part of the country were AmeriCanadians, a hybridized identity that in no way undermines our devotion or loyalty to Canada but that reflects all the factors that have shaped us and the different ways we interact and relate to the world. Despite the natural anger and patriotism we all feel as a result of the current American regime’s rhetoric and threats—and places like Windsor feel these far more keenly at the moment than most others in the country, I assure you—this still tracks. We may be choosing for now not to do our regular trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts for Friday Night Live; we may have let our subscription to the Paradise Jazz Series lapse; but it is also, for me, both morally and psychologically problematic to be expected to turn our backs on key relationships that have played such a role in making us who we are. And the expectation to do so is an unreasonable one.
I’m still trying to work this out; I hope that it makes sense.
There’s this idea that I came across in Mélikah Abdelmoumen’s just-published Baldwin, Styron, and Me (translated by Catherine Khordoc) that has become central to how I think of these matters: that of the frontier dweller. Abdelmoumen quotes the Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf from In the Name of Identity:
Wherever there are groups of human beings living side by side who differ from one another in religion, colour, language, ethnic origin or nationality; wherever there are tensions, more or less long standing, more or less violent, between immigrants and local populations, Blacks and Whites, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Arabs, Hindus and Sikhs, Lithuanians and Russians, Serbs and Albanians, Greeks and Turks, English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians, Flemings and Walloons, Chinese and Malays—yes, wherever there is a divided society, there are men and women bearing within them contradictory allegiances, people who live on the frontier between opposed communities, and whose very being might be said to be traversed by ethnic or religious or other fault lines.
Who, these days, does not bear within them contradictory allegiances? Baldwin, Styron, and Me is a book about living with such, acknowledging them, and more importantly, despite the tremendous cost such effort entails, remaining true to them. It’s about not letting others, with their limited conception of who you are, define you, whether it be via a census or a checklist or otherwise. In the same way that the amalgamation of Abdelmoumen’s hometown of Chicoutimi with La Baie into Saguenay does not erase key particularities that made those places distinct, or a resident’s memory of them as such, memories that can be passed down from generation to generation, the amalgamation of certain key traits or aspects of our individual and collective histories and lives does not erase anything either. We all maintain contradictory allegiances, or if we’re honest with ourselves should: this book serves as a timely reminder of this.
Photo: Still from Mélikah’s interview below, featuring portraits of James Baldwin and William Styron.
But Baldwin, Styron, and Me is at the same time one of my favourite things, a book about books, a book about the power of books, and about the way that the discovery of a writer and their work at the right moment can transform how one relates to the world. This happened when Mélikah discovered the works of James Baldwin. Who among us has not had a similar moment reading Baldwin’s work? (And for those who haven’t, I envy you the pleasure of the discovery: your time will come, and perhaps this book will serve as both catalyst and introduction). But Baldwin, Styron, and Me is also a work of literary historical investigation and recreation, telling the story of how one particular literary friendship between the grandson of a slave and the grandson of a slaveowner transformed the lives and work of both, while at the same time serving as a reminder that many of the debates we are having about literature and who has the right to write what are part of a much longer historical conversation. It is a generous and humane work of imagination, both “a personal and courageous meditation” (Lawrence Hill) and “a balm for this time and a welcome visit with new and old relations,” (Jesse Wente) a book that anticipates and encourages discussion and disagreement.
Mélikah’s niece put together a short video profile and interview with Mélikah about the book: rather than this week linking to an interview or excerpt we thought we’d share it with you here.
Dan Wells,
Publisher
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Narrating Identities: An interview with Mélikah Abdelmoumen
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In good publicity news:
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- Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen was featured in Lit Hub for its pub date!
- On Book Banning by Ira Wells was featured in two Canadian School Library Journal articles, “The Language of Censorship” and “Censors Are Targeting Schools.” Ira Wells was also interviewed on the Get Lit radio show.
- Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (trans. Philip Roughton) was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada: “An artfully crafted and arresting novel . . . Stefánsson excels at turning small places into the absolute centre of the world.“
- Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg (trans. Wendy H. Gabrielsen) was also reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada: “A thoughtfully paced debut, and Stoltenberg moves between past and present with apparent ease.“
