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.
Hieu Minh Nguyen’s poetry collection Staying Still brilliantly examines topics like the complex family legacy of refugees and queer life.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Explores queer desire, refugee inheritance, and generational loneliness in works that range between intimate memory and the forces shaping identity and longing.”
In his own words, here is Hieu Minh Nguyen’s Book Notes music playlist for his poetry collection Staying Still:
Stream the playlist at Apple Music
Yearn, baby, yearn.
I wanted to make a playlist that wandered alongside my book. So these are songs to play while you back out of the driveway. Songs to hum while you’re filling up the tank—to drum along on the steering wheel while you’re crossing that big dumb bridge. Songs with the scent of your dashboard ornaments, the bloom of your old mattress in a new room. Songs for dressing up like your mother and wandering the night. You know when you’re looking up at the lit windows of an apartment building and you find someone looking back? A song for that occasion, too. Red lipstick songs. Songs that get you into—and out of—the mood. Songs for when your friends beckon you out of the house. Songs to blare in the background for when your mom calls you at the club. Songs that someone once played for you—someone you can’t remember, but someone you miss.
Hieu Minh Nguyen is the author most recently of the poetry collection Staying Still (Tin House/Zando).