Mix Tape Memories: Movement and Difference in Life Writing (Palgrave Studies in Life Writing)

This book ‘plays up’ stories of mostly unknown figures and their journeys through a life affected by movement, and a search for home. It engages with individuals and groups whose passions have carried the subjects through ‘uncharted’ or unhomely territories, here told in a series of ‘tracks’ depicting their roles in community memories and histories. Side A engages with individual journeys, such as Lewis, the American black literature book seller; the civil rights activist, Izzy, an American-Swedish folklorist; Eugene, a black classical pianist; and Pi, the Jew transported to Sweden during WWII. Side B focuses on communal histories and alternative educational and artistic spaces, addressing life writing and memory in German comic books; alternative educational spaces in Israel-Palestine and Africa, and  ‘small press passions’ of zines/newsletter culture. Tellers and their interpreters are mediating identities where nationality, race, and class (and other markers of identity) have influenced selfhood and collective belonging - revealing how individuals and outsider cultures have the power to influence dominant cultures and inspire societal change.

Anders Høg Hansen is Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Malmö University, Sweden. He is the co-editor of Memory on Trial (Springer, 2015), and author of Bob Dylan 1961-1967 (Frydenlund, Copenhagen, 2012). He has a degree in cultural studies and has engaged broadly with zines/newsletters, alternative education, and art and social change.