My Men: (Mes Hommes)

A cross between kiss-and-tell and curse-and-tell, Malika Mokeddem’s memoir of the men in her life presents a mosaic of relationships defining what it is to be a woman, an immigrant, a doctor, and a citizen of an uncertain world. From her childhood days in French colonial Algeria to her later years as a doctor in Paris and a writer in Montpellier, Mokeddem traces the path of a brilliant girl in a world of men. Anorexia, insomnia, financial independence, escapism in books, atheism, self-imposed exile, painting, and the poetics of free love—such are the various ways in which she has responded to discrimination.

 

Mokeddem hauntingly describes how her literary and medical careers blossomed along with her sexuality and her desire to escape the gender bias that shackled Algerian tradition. At once a scathing critique of Algerian patriarchy and a soaring tribute to the men who opened a window on the world, Mokeddem’s story is a fascinating portrait of gender as it is actually felt, lived, and never left behind.

Malika Mokeddem is an Algerian immigrant who has lived most of her life in France. A medical doctor as well as a writer, she worked in Montpellier as a general practitioner focusing on the health needs of the immigrant North African community until recently, when death threats forced her to close her clinic. She now works several days a week at a nephrology clinic and devotes the rest of her time to writing. She is the author of numerous books, including two books translated and available in Bison Books editions: The Forbidden Woman and Century of Locusts.

 

Laura Rice is a professor of English at Oregon State University and Karim Hamdy is the director of the Center for Maghrib Studies in Tunis. They are translators of Mokeddem’s Century of Locusts. Rice has also written about Malika Mokeddem in her book Of Irony and Empire: Islam, the West, and the Transcultural Invention of Africa.