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Author(s): Linke, Gabriele | Abstract: To achieve a better understanding of the dynamic transnationalism at work in African American politics since the 1960s, this study compares the life narratives by Angela Davis and Cynthia McKinney, two transnationally active radical Black intellectuals known for their fierce opposition to mainstream US politics. Davis’s An Autobiography was first published in 1974, McKinney’s memoir Ain’t Nothing Like Freedom in 2013, which means that the texts were conceived at different points in African American, US and world history. Despite the temporal distance between the two autobiographical texts, they show some fundamental similarities in the construction of the self as both authors on the one hand evoke the history of slavery and slave resistance as their political ‘pedigree’ while on the other hand they emphasize their transnational perspective. They foreground political struggle and intellectual analysis rather than elaborating the details of personal life. Major differences arise from their different positions with regard to the political establishment. While Davis presents her life story as representative of the fight for Black liberation and Civil Rights, former Congresswoman McKinney describes herself as an uncompromising outsider and lone voice of resistance to mainstream US politics. As she targets government lies, she supports the credibility of her own stories by the excessive use of documents from photographs through hate mails to Congressional records, making her own activism transparent. Her outlook with regard to peace, justice, and the role of the Unites States in the world is, however, less optimistic than Angela Davis’s after her release from prison in 1974.

This essay looks at recent Scottish autobiographical writing in the context of Scottish devolution and the collective memory work produced to mark the millennium. This focus on collective memory through oral history life-stories was aimed at documenting the “life of the nation”. The essay addresses the question: Whose life-stories are recorded, published and enter the public sphere? It argues that an understanding of this provides relevant insights into the inner structure, self-image and current concerns of the nation. Major themes of the texts chosen for analysis are gender, class and location. The main focus of the essay is on what these autobiographical texts reveal about Scottish identity and the essay identifies the key narratives of Scottishness in play in the selection and publishing of the collective autobiographies.

(2011). Kinsey—An Inquiry into American Sexual Identity. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies: Vol. 26, Biopics and American National Identity, pp. 138-155.