Imagining the City: Memories and Cultures in Cape Town

"The overriding strength of this book is that it places people—ordinary people—at the centre of memory, at the centre of historical and contemporary experience, and thus at the centre of reimagining and owning the city of Cape Town. It is as they speak—what they choose to say, what they choose to remain silent about—that we become aware of the possibilities of the city, if it really did embrace all its people, in all of their diversity."  —Mike van Graan, from the foreword Cities are not only made of buildings and roads, but they are also constructed through popular imagination and memory as evidenced in this collection of oral and visual histories drawn from the people who live, work, and creatively express themselves in Cape Town, South Africa. The collected works move beyond apartheid history to analyze the reflective ways in which people are coming to terms with that history through memory work, performance, and memorialization.