“There’s a particular lineage of Black music that runs through my debut novel, We Are A Haunting, artifacts of migration across regions and the resiliency of ever-expanding traditions. The book is an archive, a preservation of the journey of Black music…”
“My life would be nothing without music and writing. Not because listening to music inspires my writing, but because writing music inspires my writing.”
“My book is like a love letter to my dead best friend, and an examination of grief as well as a glimpse into the worlds of two Black alt girls.
A mixtape is also a love letter.”
“My life has always been flooded with music.”
“The Distance from Slaughter County has one essay especially devoted to music. Its an exploration of the country music I grew up listening to; that essay is already a playlist, more or less. I hope the tunes below will give a sense for what the rest of the book is about, and what it was like to write.”
“I was jilted and I was stoned and I listened over and over to Bob Dylan. It was my drug of choice. The music felt like the simultaneous anticipation and afterglow of sex, coursing through me like the continuous caudal I had been promised in childbirth, like my mother’s blessing.”
“Usually when I write, I listen to songs by very sad people mumbling, and while I love that genre and this playlist includes some songs like that, I knew this novel needed broader kinds of sound.”
“My new novel has been called a startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind. Inspired by these themes, here is my curated playlist filled with food, sex, and lots of longing.”
“When I wasn’t writing, I spent a lot of time in the park near where I lived, listening to an elaborate playlist I had crafted for the book that reflected, for me, the emotional beats of the story. It felt like a way to inhabit the world of my novel, even when I wasn’t in it.”
“Most of my work is about obsession. If I had to identify the prevailing mood and motivation of the characters in Mon Dieu, Love, it is this sort of simmering, low-grade longing for something they’ve never experienced – a fantasy of romantic relationships that are stable and wild, risky and cozy, and secure and challenging all at once.”