In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Emerson Whitney’s O Mother is a moving memoir of familial relationship.
Henry Hoke wrote of the book:
“Emerson Whitney is a generational talent, and O Mother is an unparalleled work of immersive memoir. Every sharply detailed, tender passage aches with the inexpressible. A reclamation of care from the devastation of this cruel country.”
In their own words, here is Emerson Whitney’s Book Notes music playlist for their memoir O Mother:
“Lost at Sea” — Oshima Brothers
This book was written on the water in Wabanakik, Maine, and the Oshima Brothers are a staple here. There are some things we do a lot of: we wear Xtratufs or Muck Boots and Grundéns, and we go see the Oshima Brothers when they’re playing—at a parklet near a foreclosed mill, by a Marden’s, or anywhere else. Their music feels like it belongs to this place, which is also where this book belongs.
“Heaven” — Tierra Whack
What can I say, heaven has all my favorite people, is something I was thinking that throughout writing this book, which is written in direct address to my mom as an ongoing conversation. It also includes her own writing to me, a book-length letter she left behind. My mom died by suicide, a self-completed death that came as a total surprise. This book is about continuing a relationship after death, about staying in conversation with someone who is no longer alive.
“Nothing Comes Easy” — Joy Oladokun
I love this line from Joy about the song: “I wrote this song about learning to trust that pain isn’t personal.”
I listened to this a lot while driving, sometimes crying. I wish I could have taken some of the difficulty of my mom’s life off her shoulders. She worked physically demanding jobs for little money and carried constant stress. The book is about ableism, about how my mom was never allowed to be “disabled,” because she had to keep working.
On one of my last days cleaning out her house, I found a sticky note stuck to a childhood photo of her that said, “do I have autism? Is that what’s going on.” I didn’t know she wondered this. O Mother is in some ways a long thank you to my mom for leading me back to my own childhood autism diagnosis, which I’d long ignored.
“Bass Boat” — Zach Bryan
I got a need to find trouble when things are alright
I pine for pain in the mornin’ light
And even with my baby sittin’ next to me
I’m a self-sabotagin’ suicide machine
“Way of the World” — Noah Cyrus, Ella Langley
After the sheriff knocked on my door—arriving in a strangely quiet SUV to tell me my mom had died—I started thinking about death constantly. I still do.
We lived just fifteen minutes from each other and were only beginning to learn how to be neighbors.
Writers like Alexandre Baril have written about how the criminalization of suicidal people and suicidal thinking produces devastating silence. O Mother argues that this silence is part of what made my mom’s life unsurvivable.
“Black Dog” — Arlo Parks
Who hasn’t wanted to coax someone they love out of their pain?
My mom and I shared Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and so does her mom. The three of us were a strong trio. We wanted her to be okay so we could keep being together and watching QVC and laughing, our laughter has always been everything.
“Light On” — Maggie Rogers
I feel like I’ve left the porch light on for my mom.
Sometimes I expect her to write in the fogged mirror after my shower or take a glass of water out of my hand and spill it or like make all the lights flash and all the windows open. My grandma and I used to joke about this: why isn’t she haunting us? We would love that.
We decided it might be because she was ready to leave the conditions of being here. That made sense to us. Still, we’re both waiting in a loving way.
This book, in many ways, is a lighthouse.
“Lonely Island” — Amble
I live in one of my favorite places in the world, where my mom also lived. We bonded over it constantly.
We’re near Acadia National Park. There are eagles and osprey and bobcats and owls and black bear cubs. There’s something about being here that holds both life and death at once.
The sea gives and the sea takes away, my grandparents always say.
“Sky World Song” — Bear Fox
This one’s just perfect. I listen to it most days.
Emerson Whitney is a writer and a professor. Their book Heaven, McSweeney’s 2020, was named a ‘best book’ by the AV Club, PAPER, Literary Hub, Refinery29, Ms. Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, the Observer, and the Seattle Times. Heaven was also awarded a Kirkus star and was written about by nonfiction editor at Kirkus, Eric Liebetrau, in a piece called “Queer Memoir Old and New” as a profile of Emerson and Heaven is compared to Alice B. Toklas’ by Gertrude Stein. Heaven also won a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and continues to garner praise. Emerson was named a 2020 Now List awardee in literature alongside Ocean Vuong and Danez Smith by Them magazine. Emerson’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, Paris Review and elsewhere.