In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
The linked stories and novella in Toni Ann Johnson collection But Where’s Home? form a multi-generational epic that follows a Black American family for almost 60 years.
Mat Johnson wrote of the book:
“In But Where’s Home?, Toni Ann Johnson brilliantly utilizes the short story form to create a multifaceted portrait of an American family. It’s insightful, it’s gripping, it’s funny, it’s unflinching―it’s the real deal. Not since J. D. Salinger’s Glass stories have I encountered a kindred so alive on the page.””
In her own words, here is Toni Ann Johnson’s Book Notes music playlist for her short fiction collection But Where’s Home?:
Take the A Train, Duke Ellington (composer Billy Strayhorn)
I chose this song in an early story about the Arrington family because I see “Take the A Train” as a representation of their old life in the Black Community. In the story “Home,” Phil Arrington hums the swinging jazz tune as he and his wife, Velma, and Phil’s daughter, Livia (from a previous marriage), are on their way out the door to look at a home they’ll ultimately buy in the white town of Monroe, NY. They won’t be taking the A Train anymore, but at this point in the book, Phil still has ties, however slight, to the Black community. His father, who died when Phil was ten years old, was a jazz fan and would have known and enjoyed this song. Jazz is one way Phil maintains a connection to his father. The A Train, and the old life it represents, will become more distant after this early story, because they’re buying into a new life and assimilating into a white community.
Let’s Stay Together, Al Green
The Arringtons’ white next-door neighbors, the Megnas, talk about a barbecue that alarmed them, where Phil and Velma had at least fifty of their Black relatives standing outside their house talking, while music was playing. The party was in 1972, the year “Let’s Stay Together” was released. While the song isn’t in the text, it’s soul music that would be played at a Black family’s summer get-together. Even if Phil and Velma, who’ve assimilated, don’t have Al Green’s album in their collection, some relative from the old neighborhood would bring it for the rest of the family to enjoy.
Footprints, Miles Davis (composer Wayne Shorter)
Livia is a teenager in the story “Pride.” She’s visiting the house in Monroe and goes downstairs to see her father in his office, where he’s writing, drinking scotch, and listening to Jazz. This song fits because it’s nearly a decade after the earlier story, where they bought the house. Footprints, written by Wayne Shorter, played by Miles Davis and his band, is a different style of jazz, cool and modern, compared to the big band swing of “Take the A Train.” Phil has changed in that decade. He sees himself as cool and sophisticated, and like Miles Davis, he exudes a confident swagger that the dominant culture wasn’t comfortable seeing in Black men. The song, as I see it, was an artistic expression more interested in its virtuosity than in the entertainment value of swing era jazz. Phil knows he’s on the same level intellectually and socioeconomically as the few professional white men in the town. He plays tennis with them, he earns as much as they do, he’s as well educated and well-traveled, and sometimes he sleeps with their wives. This song is by confident artists who are more interested in their own experience of the music and making it great, according to their standards, than they are in the approval of white audiences. This is how Phil begins to see himself in the world. He’s not there to entertain or be an amusement to white people. He’s living his life on equal terms.
Rachmaninoff Piano Concert No. 2, Second Movement
In the story “Far Away from Here,” Phil and Velma’s eight-year-old daughter, Maddie, is growing up in Monroe, and she’s the only Black girl in her ballet class. She’s singled out and insulted by her ballet teacher when she forgets a combination’s choreography. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concert No. 2, Second Movement has a haunting sadness that feels appropriate for Maddie’s experience that day. She walks off the dance floor into the dressing room to console herself. This same piece of music inspired the pop song “All by Myself.” Eric Carmen wrote the sad lyrics to Rachmaninoff’s melancholy composition. In Carmen’s version, the singer is lamenting being alone in a “woe is me” way. Maddie feels equally isolated in this story.
Fly Me to the Moon, Frank Sinatra (composer, Bart Howard)
The Arringtons’ marriage deteriorates throughout the book. In the story “To the Moon,” the couple has recently purchased a larger house in Monroe on a substantial piece of property that features a pool, tennis court, and two cottages. It’s their “we’ve made it,” home. But they can’t stand each other. And Phil has a white mistress. He’s preoccupied with missing his father and wishing he were there to support him. He’s reached success, and yet due to New York State’s 1970s divorce laws, he’s trapped in a marriage he detests. At the bar of an Italian restaurant that only plays jazz recorded by white artists, Sinatra’s rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” comes on. The lyrics move Phil to think not of a lover, but of his father. “You are all I long for, all I worship, and adore.” He wants his dead father’s approval, though deep down, he knows the man’s moral code was superior to his own.
Little Girls, Patti LaBelle (Composer Allee Willis)
This is a Velma Arrington song because she’s a little girl inside, even as a woman. She was separated from her birth parents as a toddler, and her emotional maturity never properly progressed. She throws tantrums as an adult, trying to get her needs met because her husband Phil is an emotionally abusive philanderer. There’s a line in the song, “When a man falls in love with me, he moves into me like he would a house. He decorates me and lives his fantasies out.” Their marriage was a presentation, a sophisticated, attractive Black couple, but like a home staged to sell, it turned out to be a façade, mostly for show.
Handyman, Alberta Hunter (Composers Andy Razaf and Eubie Blake)
The novella, But Where’s Home?, contains a lot of music. Maddie, the main character, sings and plays the piano. She’s in college at NYU in 1980, and she’s obsessed with Alberta Hunter (the real jazz artist), an elderly Black jazz singer, who performs at a club within walking distance from her dorm. Maddie is particularly amused by the song “Handyman” because it’s filled with sexual innuendo, implying that Ms. Hunter is having a wonderful sex life, while Maddie, a virgin, is frustrated and having no success with men at all.
Home, Whitney Houston (Composer Charlie Smalls, from the musical The Wiz)
As Livia grows up, she holds an idealized view of her childhood before her mother and Phil split. She longs for that family even as life moves forward without it. She’d like to go back to when Phil was her dad, whom she lived with, without having to share him. Eventually, as in the song, she realizes that she must find that place of security within so she can fully inhabit her adult life.
Imagine, John Lennon
John Lennon’s murder occurs during Maddie’s first semester of college in December 1980. She talks about walking the halls and hearing the song “Imagine” coming from multiple rooms. Everyone is grieving. Her roommate plays the song on a boombox. Maddie refers to “Imagine” and its lyrics multiple times throughout the text. She latches onto the idea of “living life in peace” because her parents are going through a contentious divorce, and she wishes they could be peaceful and leave her in peace, too. Instead, they drag her into their drama. The song encourages the listener towards an idealistic world. Maddie longs for a better world and experience, too. Her parents are at war, and she feels like a casualty.
Out Here on My Own, Irene Cara (Composers Leslie Gore and Michael Gore)
This ballad from the movie Fame, originally sung by Irene Cara, was wildly popular in the fall of 1980, among theatre kids. Maddie sings and plays it multiple times in the novella. The lyrics speak of being alone, not fitting in, and closing one’s eyes to conjure a “you” that the singer wants to be with for comfort. Maddie is alone, dealing with self-involved parents who use her for emotional support without offering any. She ultimately discovers that the “you” she’s been longing for, the one who’ll love her, is herself.
Toni Ann Johnson is the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction for Light Skin Gone to Waste, which was selected and edited by Roxane Gay. The book was also shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize and nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Johnson’s novella Homegoing was a semifinalist for the William Faulkner Wisdom Award in fiction and won Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest. Her novel Remedy for a Broken Angel earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. As a screenwriter, Johnson won the Humanitas Prize for Ruby Bridges and Crown Heights.