Mixtape of an Eastern Girl is a novel about growing up in the GDR, female self-empowerment and music as an existential aid to survival. The protagonist Joni Müller grows up between prefab housing blocks and quiet rebellion, longing and contradiction. Music becomes her vanishing point: sounds from the radio, Western cassettes and song lyrics open windows onto another reality. She bends the GDR into shape for herself until it no longer works, and after the fall of the Wall she lives her own road movie: stumbling through relationships, through cities, through times. Always in search of a place that feels like home. And of a sound that carries her.

BoD, softcover, 204 pages

How Monika Groth weaves memory, music and self-empowerment into an East German biography in “Mixtape of an Eastern Girl”.

By Katrin Tobis

“Chapter by chapter, track by track, Monika Groth invites us on a journey into the recent past.

Impressively and vividly, she tells of childhood and youth in the GDR, of setting off for East Berlin and of a young woman who finds her way to freedom and self-determination. Throughout, music is Joni's reliable companion in life - and in survival.”

“Read in one go. It impressed me, touched me, amused me and left me amazed!”

“Authentic! The book took me on a journey full of memories and leaves me wanting more.”

“Couldn't put the book down. I'm blown away! Very grippingly written.”

“It left me in a state of breathlessness - wild, a firework display!”

“A wild, profound and painfully beautiful life story.”

Freies Wort/ inSüdthüringen

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