Mix Tape Memories Movement and Difference 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.

Side A: Chapter 1: A1 The Reading Room of the Black Power Movement
Lewis Michaux and the Harlem black literature bookstore.- Chapter 2: A2 The Folk Singers Caves: First We Take Manhattan, Then Stockholm-Izzy Young mediating folk music in New York and Stockholm for 6 decades.- Chapter 3: A3 Reclusive Openness: A Black American Classical Pianist in Europe - Eugene Haynes, in USA, France and Denmark – while befriending author Karen Blixen.- Chapter 4: A4 The Human Exhibit and Teacher-musician: From St Croix to Nakskov, Denmark - Victor Cornelins.- Chapter 5: A5 Maps and Territory: The Child’s Mappings and the Adult’s ‘Walkabout’ - Svend Åge Hansen’s drawing, writing and travelling.- Chapter 6: A6 Memory as Resource: The October 1943 Boat Escape to Sweden - Pi Stilvén and granddaughter Sara Rehnström.- Chapter 7 : A7 Facing the Pasts: War diaries, 1944-1945, TherapyWriting 1995, and the Trip to Belsen.
Phil and Michael Raines.- Chapter 8: A8 Letters from Palestine and Ghana - Thomas L. Hodgkin and British Imperialism.- Side B.- Chapter 9: B1 History Reimagined: German Graphic Novels  - Mawil and Flix on youth and memory in Germany.- Chapter 10: B2 Wahat Al-Salam/Neve Shalom: A Jewish-Arab Village - Living alternative education in Israel-Palestine, Now and Then..- Chapter 11: B3 Listening as Action: Alternative Education in Tanzania and Mozambique - Listening posts, aspiring journalists, role models and educational rites of passage.- Chapter12: B4 Small Press Passions: Zines and scenes of popular memory - Women Making History, Sweden. herri, South Africa. BLTX, Philippines.- Chapter 13: B5 Black and White: Race, Football, and Music in the Midlands, UK, late 1970s - The black and white testimonial, Laurie Cunningham,and the bodies that changed British football.- Chapter 14: B6 Musical Living Archives: The Local and the Global
Sorrow Songs, Dengue Fever, Sixto Rodriguez, and M.I.A

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.