“Because the book is about ancestors, I needed music that had a certain ritual vibe to it.”
“I build the playlist to set mood, to create a headspace where my characters can swim and dance and fight and do all the things complex characters do.”
“Before Vervain Hollow was a book, it was a playlist.”
“The Grief Shop and Other Stories from a Broken World takes place after ‘the tragedy’ kills ⅓ of the earth’s population, and renders the rest clinically emotionally numb.”
“For every project, I make a playlist. I rarely listen to it while I write, but I use it as a towline back into the mood, characters and world of the story.”
“This playlist transports me to the dining room of my childhood house, or the interior of my beloved Volvo station wagon, which was covered in bumper stickers, or expat bars in dusty alleyways and the shared connection those spaces provide.”
“The protagonists in both my fiction and nonfiction narratives—including my memoir—are almost always people who try to do the right thing and fail.”
“In 1960s Cuba and beyond, music considered counterrevolutionary was banned, and so Felix is careful about who he plays his American records with. It’s an element that runs through the novel and mirrors all the other things that Felix must hide from society and his family to survive.”
“This playlist is a collection of songs that brought me back to my spirit, my roots, and my resilience, which is so deeply rooted in the strength of the global majority. “
“…as I imagined writing this book, I went for comfort listens, feel-good familiar songs, that, when listened to closely, revealed an underlayer of death, destruction, loss. Apocalypse songs.”