In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Avery Irons’s novel Belonging to the Air is a profound coming-of-age novel.
Foreword Reviews wrote of the book:
“A Black girl comes of age, refining her conceptions of love and family, in Avery Irons’s incandescent historical novel set amid the Great Migration. . . . A lovely bildungsroman, Belonging to the Air is about family, community bonds, forgiveness, and love.”
In her own words, here is Avery Irons’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Belonging to the Air:
Belonging to the Air is the coming of age story of Honest “Bird” Bennett, a young Black girl with a hunger to learn what lies beyond the walls she shares with her mother and grandmother. The women live in Bennettsville, Illinois, a freedmen’s town established by Bird’s great-grandfather. As Bird comes of age, she falls in love with a childhood friend and must reckon with the turbulence this causes in her hometown. She ultimately spreads her wings and travels to New York City to find herself in the world but must ultimately return home to fulfill the role she was born to and protect her town.
I absolutely love the idea of soundtracks for books and approached this playlist from that angle. Music is a large part of my process, and I often listen to songs on repeat when writing scenes. Finding a song that aligns with the emotion or experience I’m trying to communicate helps me go deeper and stay in the moment. That didn’t happen with each of these songs, but if I could pair them to someone’s reading of Belonging to the Air, these are the ones I’d choose. The songs either evoke a mood or align closely with the novel’s movement. I’m intense about lyrics and sound quality. For most of the songs, the specific versions were hand selected. A good stretch of time, beverage of choice, and quality headphones are recommended.
“Loving You” by Minnie Riperton (Perfect Angel)
Love between mothers and daughters is at the core of Belonging to the Air. The relationships between the Bennett women are as complicated as they are fierce. When I imagine their moments of peace and connection, the light and love in this Minnie Riperton song captures them perfectly.
“By Your Side” by Sade (Lovers Rock)
If we are fortunate, childhood is a time in our life that promises so many forevers. Summer will last forever. Our friendships will last, as well as the stability of our family. That’s the promise early in the novel—that the Bennett women and the town, despite their constraints and disagreements, will always be there for each other.
“Fool of Me” by Meshell Ndegeocello (Bitter)
There is youthful disbelief in one’s first heartbreak (or at least there was in mine). The questioning and disbelief in “Fool of Me” is as gentle as it is honest. It evokes the awkwardness that Bird experiences as her town expects her to interact with her first love and act like nothing ever happened between them.
“Astral Plane” by Valerie June (The Order of Time)
I love the ethereality of this song and Valerie June’s voice. As Bird endures some of the most emotionally challenging transitions of her life, I think of the existential and lyrical beauty of we and our ancestors “dancing on the astral plane” and finding our lights inside ourselves.
“Sinnerman” by Nina Simone (Felix Da Housecat’s Heavenly House Mix)
This song is a call and response with the one that follows it. If you’ve ever had to come out in a religious family, you know that the first piano licks in this mix match your heartbeat. And, also that, people will try to take you to the end times real quick, asking you to forfeit your life for some future risk or reward.
“Ain’t Go No- I Got Life” by Nina Simone (The Essential Nina Simone)
After a lifetime of family pressure and expectations that she knows she can’t meet, Bird is forced to question and answer who she is, what she values, and what she wants out of life. Nina Simone’s perfectly imperfect, unwavering, and unapologetic voice claims herself and her love herself, in a way that I imagine Bird does so.
“Pocketbook” by Meshell Ndegeocello (Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape)
Enter Leah. You know her . . . or someone like her. The one (two or there) you should have left alone—but didn’t. Oh well, what’s a little heartbreak and a few hard lessons learned in life. “Pocketbook” and the Tracy Chapman song, “Give Me One Reason” that follows it are a flirtatious call and response. For her piece, Leah or “Big Lee” offers Bird the sexy, dangerousness of the Harlem Renaissance.
“Give Me One Reason” by Tracy Chapman (New Beginning)
And even with all the bravado of the previous song, the response is Give Me One Reason. I’ve always loved the playfulness and clear standard setting of this song. And for all the beats and bass of Pocketbook, the response is simple, matter-of-fact, and self-affirming.
“It Might Not Be Right” by Ruthie Foster (Promise of a Brand New Day)
I couldn’t make a playlist with Texas Blues Goddess, Ruthie Foster. Bird went to NYC to find either solace or acceptance. She didn’t find (or expect to find) a community without bias. “It might not be right” evokes Bird’s acceptance of this reality, as well as her clarity that she is who she is. It may not work for everyone else, but it’s all right for her.
“Angel” by Aretha Franklin, [(Hey Now Hey, (The Other Side of the Sky)]
Sung by Aretha Franklyn and written by her younger sister Carolyn Franklyn, “Angel” has one of the interest piquing openings. I’m not nosy, y’all, but there has got to be a story in it (if you know, you know). I picture Bird and her chosen family in New York sitting around a kitchen table sipping tea (or something harder), and Bird basically saying “don’t put the limitations on my heart that my family in Illinois did. Can you love all of me?”
“Welcome Home,” Ruthie Foster, (Keep it Burning)
If you’ve left home, it’s hard to find your way back. In this live version of “Welcome Home,” Ruthie (if you ever read this, can I call you Ruthie?) captures the love and the pain beautifully, and mashes in a song from her “favorite Irish band” as she called them in an interview.
“If I had a Hammer,” Ruthie Foster, (Let it Burn)
Like I said earlier, this playlist was made for good headphones. If you haven’t put them on by now, you need to do so, and hear the soul reverberations in the call for justice and the healing of connection between men and women who have been oppressed and harmed for generations. This song marks Bird’s realization of her role in her family and town, as well as the ability to be herself among her people.
“Feeling Good” by Nina Simone, (I Put a Spell on You)
The last song on this playlist goes to Nina Simone who fought with the world and herself for the betterment of both and paid the price for it. I hope we can all feel good in the simplest of ways: “Butterflies all havin’ fun, you know what I mean, sleep in peace when day is done, that’s what I mean.”
Avery Irons was born and raised in central Illinois. She is the author of the novella Glass Men, which won Big Fiction magazine’s Novella Prize, and short fiction that has appeared in the African American Review, Ragazine, and Sinister Wisdom. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and received support for the completion of Belonging to the Air through the Kimbilio Novel Mentorship Program.