Rambsy argues that the widespread recent use of persona poems by African American authors makes an examination of African American poetry in the context of autobiography especially timely. In the realm of poetry, Black writers have been integral to first-person portrayals of African American lives. An analysis of persona poems in relation to book-length volumes that concentrate on individual African American historical figures creates new scholarly possibilities. Indeed, book history and print culture studies concentrate on publications produced during the nineteenth century. Conversely, an examination of persona poems by Black poets reveals the viability of studying contemporary African American book history. This chapter addresses more than forty poets and sixty volumes of poetry and individual poems forming first-person narratives. Not comprehensive but focused, this study analyzes noteworthy contributions to the production of autobiographical narratives in African American poetry.

The fifth chapter reads contemporary remix culture against the long history of literary engagement with technologies of sound. While the literary remixes of poet Kevin Young (To Repel Ghosts: The Remix [2005]) and novelist Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters Remix [2012]) serve as case studies of the ways writers have adapted the practice of remix to the medium of print, the scope of this chapter is more wide ranging, investigating remix as a cross-disciplinary aesthetic mode. I explore the origins of remix in the dance hall but also in the cut-up techniques of William S. Burroughs; I examine how remix inflects more traditional literary publications but also its impact on digital spaces for iterative writing (such as fan fiction). This chapter reveals that remix’s inherently textual bent has been embedded in the practice since the beginning.