In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Chantel Acevedo’s novel Cages is a moving and thoughtful book about forbidden love in a totalitarian society.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“This illuminating novel from Acevedo (The Distant Marvels) documents the tormented life of a gentle zookeeper in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Homosexuality is considered counterrevolutionary by Castro’s regime, and punishable by imprisonment or confinement in a psychiatric hospital. Felix, a zookeeper in Havana carrying on a secret love affair with his male coworker, Réne, grows anxious from these threats as well as the Cuban Missile Crisis… the author shows how the cages of the title are both literal and metaphorical, representing homophobia, heteronormative marriage, and authoritarianism. It’s a mournful and impactful story of displacement.”
In her own words, here is Chantel Acevedo’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Cages:
Cages tells the story of Felix, a gay zookeeper in Cuba, London and Miami spanning the 1960s through the early ’90s. The novel is told by a series of witnesses and key players in his life—his lovers, his wife, his brother-in-law and youngest daughter—all in answer to questions from his eldest daughter, the one he was estranged from and who has come looking for answers about her father. Among many things, Felix is a lover of music. 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. The artists listed in this playlist all appear in the novel as well, save for the last one.
Track 1: I’m Alright/Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley’s Beach Party featuring this song was the artist’s first live recording. The show was taped in 1963 in segregated Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Raucous and fun, the lyric, “I’m alright” repeats continuously and feels like Diddley trying to convince himself of the fact. The track appears in the second chapter of Cages, in a section told by Felix’s first lover, René. René, too, is desperate for things to be “alright,” not just in his relationship with Felix in a country where being gay could get you arrested, but against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, when the novel opens.
Track 2: You Beat Me to the Punch/Mary Wells
Wells was a Motown teen sensation, yet despite her youth, this song is full of mature longing. It’s a flirty tune and comes up in a moment when René is trying to understand Felix. But Felix is closed off and often unknowable. René is speaking from a present time when Felix is no longer in his life. Wells sings, “One day…you would go away and leave me blue,” presaging René’s troubled relationship with Felix.
Track 3: The Christmas Song/Nat King Cole
I am one of those annoying people who love Christmas songs year-round. In Cages, though, I kept the carol close to the season, and if we’re talking Christmas in the 60s, you can’t miss with Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song.” When it appears in the novel, Felix, his wife Anabél and their infant daughter, as well as René and his wife Elenita are enjoying what would be their last Christmas together. The scene represents the end of many things—not only the dissolution of these attachments, but the end of Christmas in Cuba as it had been known. It would be banned as a holiday in 1969 because it was said to interfere with sugar production. That ban wouldn’t be lifted until 1998, and only then in respect for Pope John Paul II’s visit to the island.
Track 4: You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away/The Beatles
The second voice we hear from in Cages is that of Claudia, a young actress in London who befriends Felix and Anabél and soon finds herself falling for the enigmatic Felix. She has this line in the book where she talks about the Beatles getting their MBEs from the Queen that year, which would have been unavoidable news. Help! was the first of their two 1965 albums (productive lads!), and given Claudia’s impulses, I couldn’t resist sharing this song here, though I wouldn’t dare be so on the nose in the book! It’s a great tune from an album that also features “Yesterday” and “Ticket to Ride.”
Track 5: How Deep is Your Love/The Bee Gees
In the novel, we hear from Virgilio next. He’s Felix’s ex-brother-in-law and essentially raising Felix’s daughter in his stead. On a rare visit, Felix sits with his tween daughter, Eva (the listener of the stories) and reacts poorly when she mentions she loves The Bee Gees. This one may also be lyrically a bit too pointed, but the question of this song is at the heart of Eva’s search for her father. Did he love me? How much? If so, why doesn’t he come around more? Try harder? Felix’s life is a complicated one, something Eva learns through the witnesses who speak with her, but as a 13-year-old, it would have boiled down to a far more simple question.
Track 6: Beautiful Dreamer/Louis Armstrong
When Anabél, Felix’s wife, finally speaks, it’s a voice that has been fueled by silence, and she’s angered to have to break it open. But she does, and her confession includes the tragedy-infused fairy tale that was her early relationship with Felix. At one point, she discusses her dreams with him, her desire to see other countries, skyscrapers, snow. She tells Felix that Cuba in 1957 is a dangerous place on the brink, and he counters by telling her danger is everywhere. He points to a story about the Little Rock Nine in the paper, and a quote by Louis Armstrong condemning segregation: “The government can go to hell.” It’s the kind of statement that just a few years later in Cuba could lead to imprisonment, or in the early days of the revolution, the paredón, or wall of execution. I’ve chosen Armstrong’s rendition of “Beautiful Dreamer” here, composed by Stephen Foster and wonderfully performed by Armstrong in 1957 on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Track 7: El Manisero/Rita Montaner
Rita Montaner’s “El Manisero” is one of her most well-known songs, featuring her lovely soprano in a lively pregón, or song sung to advertise goods, in this case, peanuts. You can still hear these “songs” on the streets of Miami. “¡Maniiiiii!” the peanut vendor sings, holding paper cones, or cucuruchos, full of warm peanuts. For me, this is a core childhood memory, and Rita Montaner elevates the everyday here to artistic heights. Why is this song on the track list? The final voice in the novel is that of Rita, Felix’s youngest daughter, named after the singer and inspired by her grandmother’s role as an actress of Cuban zarzuela’s. Rita, born in London, is very disconnected from her Cuban roots, and so she answers the call of the sister she’s never known in the hopes of learning more.
Track 8: Your Song/Elton John
Though Rita’s section is the shortest, we’ll stay with her for a few more tracks. In relating her life with her father to her sister, who had no such relationship with him, Rita paints the picture of an on-again, off-again dad, who took real interest in his daughter, which must have been difficult for Eva to hear. She mentions Felix waiting in line overnight to buy tickets to an Elton John show. Here, as in other places in the book, I’ve drawn from life. My stepfather, who has been my dad since my teens in the absence of my father, who like Felix was closeted and complicated and unknown to me, once camped out for New Kids on the Block tickets for me, which he did without fanfare, critique, or anything but genuine love for his boy-crazy kid. I think “Your Song,” written in 1970, is one of those tunes that feels as if I’ve known the lyrics my whole life. The gist of it is, here is a song I’ve written for you. Tell everybody this is your song. And when I think of my dad sitting there in the dark, waiting to buy me those tickets, I am filled with warmth and love. That was his song to me, one of many.
Track 9: Sliver/Nirvana
By the time we reach Rita’s sections, it’s the early 90s, and her references include Nirvana, REM, Princess Diana, and reflect my own early adulthood when my father passed away. Our generation’s music was so…intense. There was Kurt Cobain’s wail in “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and REM’s “Losing My Religion” video, with its depiction of Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows, evoking that combination of Gen X malaise and rage pointed everywhere and nowhere. We felt abandoned by everyone as a generation, so it made sense that sometimes, our parents abandoned us, too. Nirvana’s “Sliver” is kind of a silly song, lyrically, but behind the repeated “Grandma take me home” line is a real longing for stability, parental and otherwise.
Track 10: Turn the Lights Back On/Billy Joel
Let’s call this my cheat track. I am not overstating things when I say that Billy Joel’s songs were foundational to me becoming a writer. I think I learned dialogue, setting, and character first and most viscerally through his music. Joel’s most recent song, “Turn the Lights Back On,” comes after a 17-year pop music hiatus. In it, he’s singing to a lover: “Have I waited too long to turn the lights back on?” but also to his fans, hoping they’ll be there for him as they once were. In the context of Cages, however, one can argue Felix and Eva are saying similar things to one another after the last page has turned. “I’m late, but I’m here right now. Is there still time for forgiveness?” I’d like to think the answer was yes.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Chantel Acevedo’s playlist for her novel The Living Infinite
Chantel Acevedo was born in Miami to Cuban parents. She is the author of The Living Infinite (Europa, 2017); The Distant Marvels (Europa, 2015), a Carnegie Medal Finalist; A Falling Star (Carolina Wren Press, 2014); and Love and Ghost Letters (St. Martins, 2006), winner of the Latino International Book Award. Acevedo is a professor of English at the University of Miami, where she teaches in the MFA program.