Auto-biographies as Activism among Care-leavers

In winter 2018, Frank Nielsen, who manages the Facebook group, "Orphanages in Denmark", made a post where he wrote: "Dear members, if each of you was a book to be published, what would be the title?" Overwhelmingly many responded to the post straight away. Here is some of the answers: ”My life under the radar”, ”Lies and abandonment”, ”A distorted childhood”, ”An unwanted orphan”, ”Tolerated but unloved”, ”The (il)legitimate child”, ”Never give up”, ”A trapped soul”, ”Rootless”, ”The child of the revolving doors”, ”The black sheep”, ”Thistles in bloom.” The prompt answers indicate that many former institutionalized children – or care-leavers – have a dream about the autobiographical book that they would eventually write. Indeed, many of the care-leavers I have been in contact with during my research on their memories and memory work was planning to write a book, was writing on a book, or had already written a book. These books are not driven by artistic or aesthetic ambitions, but rather by therapeutic and political necessity. The care-leavers hope to change their relation to themselves. But they also want to point out unjust in the past and turn their suffering into a shared political and ethical issue. In my presentation I will examine these books as a special kind of subliterature and activism. I will do this by asking the questions: 1) What are the key thematic and formal characteristics of this literature? 2) What are the existential and political potentials of writing these books? And 3) How do the authors manage the inconsistencies between the redeeming plot in their book and the downturns they experience in life after the book is published