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.

Laura Kalpakian’s memoir Undesirable is a moving and profound exploration of her brother’s undesirable military discharge during the Vietnam War, her father’s attempts to change that, and the long-lasting effects of war on both combatants and their families.

Paula Becker wrote of the book:

“Undesirable is a poignant examination of duty: the author’s father’s to his son, her brother’s to his country, society’s to those who serve, and her own obligation to her father’s memory. This book reminds a new generation that wars fought far away still exact bitter collateral damage from everyone they touch back home.”

In her own words, here is Laura Kalpakian’s Book Notes music playlist for her memoir Undesirable: The Vietnam War and a Father’s Battle for Justice:

In late August 1970, my twenty-year old brother, Private Doug Johnson, boarded a plane in Vietnam bound for McChord AFB in Washington. He flew under guard because he had accepted an Undesirable Discharge in lieu of a second court-martial for going AWOL and sleeping on duty. The Undesirable denied him any veteran’s benefits. Thus, he had nothing to show for his fourteen months in Nam, nada, unless you count the dead man’s sandal that he clutched when he got off the plane where his father awaited him on the tarmac. His father, on learning the truth of Doug’s actual experience in Vietnam, was convinced the Undesirable was undeserved and, more than that, unjust. He set out to get it changed to an Honorable or a Medical.

Fifty years after these events I found in my basement a cache of documents that had not seen light since 1973. Hundreds of pages chronicled my father’s three-year battle with the Army. I read, re-read, pondered these papers, discovering in the process that the Army had covered up an egregious wrong perpetrated against my brother. Doug Johnson was once a promising musician, charming, attractive to women. He returned from Vietnam shattered physically, mentally, emotionally, still suffering from bouts of malaria, hepatitis, dysentery and jungle rot, and he was a drug addict daily shooting heroin and speed. He spent decades floundering amid addiction, alcoholism, PTSD, and mental illness, wreaking sadness and anger among those who most loved him.

As I fashioned these documents into a book, the music of that era played nonstop in my head, often intruding on the narrative. However, I could not use the lyrics on the page without expensive permissions. Fine. Lyrics alone are insufficient. You need the roll and thunder of the actual instruments, the plaintive melodies, the high-spirited hilarity and the doleful drum riffs, the youthful harmonies, the anthemic insistence. I created playlists. Each of the four sections of Undesirable has a playlist, songs illuminating the emotional, historical and thematic content of the book, primarily music of that era.

PART I PLAYLIST

Reflects the elegiac quality of these first chapters, laying out the essential tragedy of my brother’s life and my father’s efforts to save them both from despair. The songs are of the folk-rock variety, wistfully, poetically asking questions without trying or daring to provide answers.

Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag
Country Joe & the Fish

This is a whoopee-cushion of a song, as in, Whoopee, this war is totally fucked up! Here comes the Cong! Bend over, kiss your ass goodbye! I imagine this playing in the ether as my nineteen-year-old brother walked into the recruiting station in January 1969 after his parents found out he had stupidly dropped a class at the community college and made himself ripe for the draft. Big family fight ensued. Pissed off, Doug enlisted. Next stop is Vietnam!

Draft Morning
The Byrds

The Byrds were a seminal SoCal folk-rock group who broke off (evolved and devolved) into other notable groups. Here their harmonic voices and the gentle guitar work are framed with lyrics about learning to kill, and blended with warlike sound effects. Battle-flare music oozes, inevitably into “Taps,” the dirge played for more than 58,000 men whose names are on the granite wall in DC. The average age of soldiers in Vietnam was nineteen.

For What It’s Worth
Buffalo Springfield

This slow, metronomic song embodied the central question of that era for that generation: What the hell is happening here? Who is that man with the gun over there? And what can/will he do to me? (We, that is, my generation, would learn the answer to this question in May 1970 at Kent State.) Ironically, the song itself arose out of a civic disturbance at the Pandora’s Box nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in 1966. Never mind. The song reeks of both hope and fear.

[Four Dead in] Ohio
Crosby Stills, Nash & Young

Speaking of the man with the gun over there: on May 4, 1970, the National Guard shot and killed four antiwar protesters at Kent State in Ohio. Unthinkable photos of young people, lying dead on the ground, bleeding out, horrified everyone. Within mere weeks, CSN&Y created and recorded this solemn anthem, and it blared from radios. The song is both remembrance and preview. On May 15 city police and state highway patrolmen opened fire, blasted a dorm at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing two, wounding four. To me this CSN&Y live recording is more powerful than the polished studio version that played on the radio. The thumping insistence on the dead is heartbreaking to this day.

My Back Pages
The Byrds

This wistful song about being “so much older then…” speaks to me of loss perceived too late. Implicit in the rhyme scheme, the tenor voices, the harmonies is the sadness of young men in helmets, newly disillusioned. The back pages of my book Undesirable include a timeline of these brutal years, 1969 to 1973.

Turn! Turn! Turn!
The Byrds

The Byrds created this polished version of a song that originated with the legendary folk singer, Pete Seeger (1919 –2014). Pete artfully adapted Ecclesiastes 3, verses 1 –8 evoking the cyclical nature of life, any life. “A time to love, a time to hate, a time of war, a time of peace…” It becomes an antiwar anthem with the addition at the end, “I swear it’s not too late….”

Where Have all the Flowers Gone
Peter, Paul and Mary

Again, a cyclical song originating with Pete Seeger. I prefer this version with a multi-mix of guitar and harmonics, and textured volumes that underscore the thematic sadness. Mary’s sparkling soprano asks where have all the young girls gone, gone for husbands… But there are no weddings in these lyrics. Indeed, her sharp retort, “gone for soldiers, every one” stings like an indictment. The soldiers gone to graveyards, the women widowed, the orphaned children putting flowers on the graves of their lost fathers. The persistent refrain, the question, “When will they ever learn,” turns sadness into protest.

PART II PLAYLIST

Part II of Undesirable is not elegiac. These songs are not wistful, they’re insistent, angry. Part II begins to marshal the evidence, to answer the questions posed in the narrative (and the songs) of Part I. Doug’s letters and testimony reveal the truth of his time in Vietnam and his crumbling psyche. These songs played on the radio stateside, and judging from Vietnam vets’ social postings, they played in the hearts and minds of men in the warzone as well.

Can’t Find My Way Home
Blind Faith

This song rang in my head and heart from the time I brought the documents up, out of the basement. So much so that originally I planned to call the book “Can’t Find My Way Home.” The wail, the plea spoke to me of my brother’s many drugged-up AWOLs, adrift in warzones, wasted, lost, wandering, seeking some ephemeral path home which, in truth, and though he returned to California, he never quite found.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place
The Animals

The “We” of “We Gotta Get Out of this Place” includes the narrator and a girl who needs convincing to escape a dead-end town as if their lives depended on it. For men like my brother, soldiers in Nam, their lives did depend on it. For them, the “We” was a brotherhood of urgency, men who in Doug’s words were “scared shitless.” “If it’s last thing we ever do…” And for many it was the last thing.

Nowhere to Run
Martha and the Vandellas

The song itself describes obsessive love (or obsessive stalking). However, the chorus, the title, the refrain effectively describe incidents from my brother’s testimony at a hearing with the Army’s Inspector General in December 1970. Doug recounts his experience in the jungle, the long grass, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, with Vietcong on the ground nearby, and American helicopters overhead, gunners strafing the grass. (Let it be noted here that Martha’s brother served in Vietnam.)

Fortunate Son
Creedence Clearwater Revival

My brother loved CCR, so much so that he nicknamed his girlfriend after their song, “Suzie Q.” In the late sixties, CCR’s swamp-rock melodies saturated the airwaves. “Fortunate Son” pulses with hard-driving anger, testosterone rage. The refrain, insisting on everything the singer is not (“It ain’t me. It ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son…”) actually tells us who he is: some poor bastard, on point, humping through the malarial jungles, watching out for punji sticks and booby traps; he’s dirty, sweat-soaked, shooting up cocktails of speed and opium just to get through till sunset and still be alive. In short, Doug Johnson.

PART III PLAYLIST

Part III covers the events of May–August 1970 that led to Doug’s accepting the Undesirable discharge. Doug was a mere twenty days away from DEROS [Date of Estimated Return from Overseas] when Nixon finally admitted to invading Cambodia. Time Magazine ran a five-page spread of military preparations. A stringer for Time Magazine snapped a photograph of Doug and ten other hapless grunts just as they were ordered into a helicopter for the fight. (Photo from the May 25^th 1970 issue is on the cover of my book.) That’s how Doug’s parents knew he’d been sent to Cambodia. That summer his parents lived in a cauldron of grief and fear while they battled the Army for word of their son because Doug went AWOL in Cambodia and vanished into a vacuum of silence.

Teach Your Children
Crosby Stills, Nash & Young

This poignant ballad from the summer of 1970 suggests—doesn’t promise, but certainly hopes—that “their hell will slowly go by,” that love will sustain parents and their children. The generational suffering, historically assured, is softened here, served with gently twanging guitars. For my brother and my parents, no song could be more apt. “Teach Your Children” could serve as a sad canopy to the themes of my book, the love of a father for his errant son.

Eight Miles High
The Byrds

Back to the Byrds, but in “Eight Miles High” their wistful and plaintive qualities are supplanted by harsh, intricate guitarwork and druggy lyrics that promise great highs and a bunch of really scary lows, a panoply of strange faces encountered once you “touch down.” The world served up with equal parts wide-eyed wonder and fucked-up fear.

Darkness Darkness
The Youngbloods

Another drugged-up interlude captured musically. The darkness alluded to, insisted upon here describes not just my brother’s experience in Vietnam but the next thirty years of his life. Darkness truly was his pillow. He crawled through shadows. He inflicted pain.

All Along the Watchtower
Jimi Hendrix, and “Battlestar Galactica” version

With its apocalyptic imagery, its dark prophecies, the wailing instrumentation that recreates the laments of humanity from ages past (and yet to come), “All Along the Watchtower” is an almost biblical anthem. The unforgettable imagery evokes not just the horrors of war, but the horrors that emerge from war. If ever a song belonged on an anti-war playlist, not as prescription, but as warning, this is it. Though Dylan wrote it, Jimi’s is the classic rendition of “Watchtower.” I include the Battlestar Galactica version as well because that’s the one emblazoned in my psyche by virtue of my sons, Bear McCreary on keys and Brendan McCreary, vocalist, particularly in the live version.

War
Edwin Starr

A song that asks—and unequivocally answers—its own question: “War! What is it good for?” “Absolutely nothing.” The call and response elements here compel the audience not just to listen, but reply, to clap hands and shout. Maybe even jump and shout.

PART IV PLAYLIST

Part IV begins September 1970. Doug Johnson (addicted to drugs, shattered physically, strung out emotionally, suffering PTSD) returns to his family, his fiancée and a world he scarcely recognizes and one which does not recognize him. In an effort to correct his past (reverse the Undesirable) and salvage his future (save him from the burden of shame) Doug’s father picks up the pen to do battle with the Army. At the end of a three-year ordeal, there is pale victory, a compromise short of Honorable.

Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 1
Pink Floyd

My father marshaled voluminous materials to reverse the Undesirable and presented them to four different military entities. The Army met his efforts with the unflinching, unchanging stolidity of a brick wall. Deny. Defeat. Fail. Then they melted back into their institution and acronyms. The lyrics here matter less than the delivery, the unceasing thrum, the low, unrelenting menace.

The Weight
The Band

This doleful ballad, with its plain, plucking guitarwork and raggedy piano sound epitomizes my parents’ weary journey in these years while my father wrote and my mother typed. The lyrics are oblique but unmistakable. The grizzled singer is all but beaten, seeking rest, resolution, some sort of safe harbor, but the answer is always defeat, denial, and failure, an echoing No No No.

Imagine
John Lennon

In assembling his materials, my father’s writing often closes with words imploring the faceless, unknown Army brass to think, to feel, to imagine the life that Doug Johnson might yet have if only he can be spared the shame of this undeserved Undesirable. John Lennon, of course, says it better. The simple piano backgrounds swell with strings and a slow drumbeat as the lyrics sweep us all up in their embrace. Lennon too asks questions, but he has answers. He says they’re simple: If a world without hate and cruelty and violence can be imagined, then maybe it can be achieved. Maybe Lennon is dreamer, but we all long to join him.

What’s Going On
Marvin Gaye

This song begins with the families: mothers crying, brothers dying, fathers imploring against escalation. It’s the canopy anthem for the whole of Undesirable. Marvin knew whereof he spoke; his brother Frankie fought in Vietnam. From Frankie’s letters, Marvin made music about the death, the dying, the racism and the confusion, people turning to one another, asking “What’s going on? What’s going on?” He layered his music artfully with random voices not beautifully gathered in choral harmonies, but in ragged confusion, protests, pickets in the streets punished with brutality. The song demands to know what’s going on, but there are no answers in these lyrics—except that war is not solution.

Theme from “The Mission”
Ennio Morricone

This song came on the random playlist in my car as I was driving to my widowed mother’s house on January 5, 2021, to tell her that I had heard word from California that Doug had died that morning. Morricone’s forlorn beauty brought me to tears. Still does. I wept for my brother’s death, but even more so for Doug’s wasted life, that his gifts had been squandered, that he had both lived in pain and inflicted pain.

Wander My Friends
Bear McCreary, from Battlestar Galactica

When “The Mission” ended, “Wander My Friends” came on random and I outright blubbered, sobbing in the driveway of my mother’s house, moved by this simple, sad thrum of farewell written by Bear and the wistful Gaelic lyrics, sung by Brendan. The song throbs with loss. But it also has something of a martial air and it is as close as Doug Johnson would ever get to “Taps.” Doug lived far away from us, and there was, to my knowledge, no farewell service whatever for him. On January 10^th my mother had a heart attack.  

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Laura Kalpakian is the author of Memory into Memoir: A Writer’s Handbook (UNM Press), a memoir, sixteen novels, and five prize-winning collections of short fiction. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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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.

Chrissy Martin’s poetry collection Whole, Holy, Hot explores chronic illness with a unique pop culture lens.

Esmé Weijun Wang wrote of the book:

“This collection captures the realities of chronic illness and disability with language that transcends mere description into art. I nod at a phrase that reflects like a kaleidoscope, a poem that takes my breath-reminded I am not alone.”

In her own words, here is Chrissy Martin’s Book Notes music playlist for her poetry collection Whole, Holy, Hot:

I wrote much of Whole, Holy, Hot to full albums set to play on repeat. Once I’d worn out one album’s spell, I’d move to another. I wanted to stay inside a single artistic world for a while—to let its atmosphere shape the space I was writing from.

The poems in this book span a decade of my life. Many come from an earlier version of me—another city, another headspace. More were written later, once I began to understand what the manuscript needed: what connective tissue this now-living thing required. Because the poems arrived across so much time, I used the albums represented on this list to remind myself how disparate pieces of a work of art can bump, echo, clash, and cohere into one unified whole without flattening into a single note.

Now, when I look at the book, I hear these albums. I’ve been working on a mixed media acrylic painting alongside Whole, Holy, Hot, penciling the albums and audiobooks that accompanied the painting process onto the back of the canvas. If I penciled songs from the foundational albums of this book, the list would look something like this:

1. “365” by Charli xcx from Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not

I listened to Brat—the original, the deluxe, the remixes—obsessively while revising Whole, Holy, Hot, until it played in the back of my ears in silent rooms. Before the deluxe edition, “360” was my favorite: a song about performance on repeat—a knowing wink, a constant nod to being seen, the self aware of the gaze and yet still controlling the terms of that seeing. When the deluxe edition—Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not—came out, it reframed the album for me, beginning again with “360” and ending with “365.”

“360” is controlled—clean, sharp, built for the camera flash, every movement staged to be seen from every side—a full 360. “365” is a reprise—a return to that opening, but altered—the sound messier, more textured, more reverb, the speaker stuck in the all-consuming, 365-days-a-year cycle of partying, performing, being seen. The control of “360” doesn’t disappear so much as come undone in this return. This is what I want the poems in Whole, Holy, Hot to do: to show a mind and body trying to perform, and to capture the moment when that performance falters, when the mess takes over.

2. “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” by Taylor Swift from The Tortured Poets Department

When The Tortured Poets Department was announced, I was ecstatic. I had just gone to the Eras Tour, I was teaching and writing pop culture poetics—I was a poet in a department! I engraved a “The Tortured Poets Department” sign for my office door and counted down the days for its release during National Poetry Month.

When the album arrived, I was disappointed. I didn’t hear what I expect from poetry—concision, precision, fresh language, a depth that forces me to reread. I listen for sound, too—not just direct rhyme, but slant rhyme, echo, repetition and variation—something that complicates the line rather than landing it too cleanly. So when I started the title track and heard the first two lines, “You left your typewriter at my apartment / Straight from the tortured poets department,” I had to pause the album.

After many listens, I met it on its own terms. I stopped asking it to be a poetry collection and let it be what it was. I watched the public response shift, too—from early complaints about its length and unevenness to people settling into it—returning to certain songs, repeating lines, and holding onto what resonated with them. I take this as a lesson in framing: the way a work is presented shapes genre expectations and determines what an audience looks for. Those expectations, in turn, shape how we encounter the work itself.

“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” understands and plays with the danger of being defined before you speak. “Little old me” begins diminutive, but the song builds until the phrase becomes theatrical, accusatory, dangerous. When Swift sings, “So tell me everything is not about me / But what if it is? / Then say they didn’t do it to hurt me / But what if they did?” her questions turn reassurance inside out. What should soothe the speaker instead sharpens her. The song doesn’t escape its title; it mutates it. This is what I mean when I say framing matters: the title didn’t just name the album; it shaped what I expected the album to do.

That is what I mean when I say framing matters—the title didn’t just name the album, it shaped what I expected the album to do. More specifically, it made me think about titles: how they do not simply describe what follows, but teach an audience how to hear it. Sometimes the work fulfills that promise; sometimes it has to fight the title, stretch it, or make it strange. I thought about this often while titling the poems in Whole, Holy, Hot—especially the poems whose titles name a pop culture moment before complicating what that moment means. A title can act as a frame, a joke, a headline, a dare, or a trapdoor.

3. “Kill Me” by Hayley Williams from Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party

Before Hayley Williams released Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party as a full, sequenced album, she released it as a series of singles. She encouraged listeners to choose their own order, and many did, making Spotify playlists with their own arcs, turns, and emotional logic. I was interested in that freedom, but also in the way the official album eventually arrived and said: here is one possible shape.

“Kill Me” kept pulling me back because it names something Whole, Holy, Hot circles again and again: the knowledge that pain is not only personal, but inherited. The song understands the body as a bloodline, a place where other people’s grief—especially women’s grief—can keep living. The song opens with Verse 1:

Eldest daughters never miss their chances
To learn the hardest lessons again and again
Carrying my mother’s mother’s torment
I think I’m where the bloodline ends
I’ll never do the right thing again

In the second verse, the repetition changes the assignment. The daughter is no longer only carrying inherited pain, but is expected to stop it. What begins as bloodline becomes burden. That feels central to Whole, Holy, Hot: the way pain can arrive as inheritance and then become a responsibility the speaker never agreed to carry.

4. “Favorite Daughter” by Lorde from Virgin

In “Kill Me” by Hayley Williams, the daughter is burdened with carrying and ending the bloodline’s pain. In “Favorite Daughter,” the daughter is performing toward someone—singing, winning, working, breaking herself—in the hope that being excellent enough might repair something she did not break. The song captures the exhausting belief that if you just do enough, if you are good enough, if you achieve certain markers of success, then you might finally be praised, respected, and cared for by the very people meant to protect you.

Lorde sings in the second chorus:

Cause I’m an actress, all of the medals I won for ya
Panic attack just to be your favourite daughter
Everywhere I run, I’m always runnin’ to ya
Breaking my back to carry the weight of your heart

The medals are proof of goodness: look what I made, look what I survived, look what I became for you.

5. “American Teenager” by Ethel Cain from Preacher’s Daughter

Across Preacher’s Daughter, Ethel Cain traces an interconnected lineage of women through religious trauma, the patriarchal power bound up in it, and the violence it makes possible. The album’s final single, “American Teenager,” is a haunting dissection of religious inheritance and the American Dream. It distills that inheritance into a national fantasy. Its handclap-driven pop beat makes the promise sound almost radiant: be good, be faithful, be beautiful, be hopeful, support your country, and save yourself. Maybe then the world will love you back. But the brightness falters when Cain sings, “And Jesus, if You’re there / Why do I feel alone in this room with You?” Suddenly, the fantasy reveals its loneliness: God, country, and self-reliance have not saved her.

6. “Everything is romantic featuring caroline polachek” by Charli xcx from Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat

I hear the original version of “Everything is romantic” as a poem of witness, a list poem that lets a place or moment come into focus through detail, association, and accumulation rather than explanation. When Charli sings, “Lemons on thе trees and on the ground / Sandals on the stirrups of the scooters,” I hear a poetics of attention: everything is poetry if we look at it with enough curiosity. This is why I had my Introduction to Creative Writing students write their own “Everything is _____” list poems, asking them to gather beautiful, strange, or intriguing things they had seen without explaining what those details add up to.

The remix of “Everything is romantic” with Caroline Polachek is haunting in its melody and lyricism. The images listed are less pastoral and more political (“ACAB tag on a bus stop sign”) and this song’s premise is two women speaking on the phone, asking, “Everything’s still romantic, right?” Polachek answers:

Late nights in black silk in East London
Church bells in the distance
Free bleeding in the autumn rain
Fall in love again and again

Hearing “Free bleeding in the autumn rain” posited as romantic stopped me in my tracks. Like Whole, Holy, Hot, it treats the unsanitized body as beautiful, refusing the pressure to make embodiment cleaner, quieter, or easier to look at. And the vocal flips that Polachek executes right after these lines sound like the body refusing containment too: the voice breaking open, turning almost acrobatic, making beauty out of strain, excess, and release—while also being, simply, gorgeous.

7. “Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The  Machine) ” by Taylor Swift from The Tortured Poets Department

There is something about a feature with another female musician that allows a song to be especially volatile—the harmony becomes conspiracy, the accompaniment permission.

“Florida!!!” begins with the sound and sense of danger, lightly undercut by the line, “And my friends all smell like weed or little babies.” And what a way to encapsulate the asynchrony of early adulthood! As in Whole, Holy, Hot, in “Florida!!!,” home isn’t a place of solace: 

Little did you know your home’s really only
A town you’re just a guest in

That thought later darkens into:

Little did you know your home’s really only
The town you’ll get arrested

Like “no body, no crime (feat. HAIM)” on evermore, “Florida!!!” turns the female feature into a site of conspiracy, retaliation, and shared escape. The first three lines below directly echo “no body, no crime,” invoking a world where women know, cover for, and avenge one another. But the song quickly shifts from external revenge plot to something more interior and dangerous: the speaker recognizes the risk of what she has said. That recognition becomes both protection and defiance—I know this is wrong to say, but also, I am saying it anyway:

All my girls got their lace and their crimes
And your cheating husband disappeared, well
No one asks any questions here
So I did my best to lay to rest
All of the bodies that have ever been on my body
And in my mind, they sink into the swamp
Is that a bad thing to say in a song?

That question becomes both shield and dare: an acknowledgment that the confession has crossed some invisible line, and a refusal to walk it back. Whole, Holy, Hot is interested in that same charged threshold, where exposure becomes not a failure of control, but a form of power.

8. “Mirtazapine”by Hayley Williams from Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party

I love this song because of the celebratory, joyful, companionate way it addresses medication. And it is the addressee in this song—pardon, “she” is the addressee in the song. The chorus repeats:

Mirtazapine
You make me eat, you make me sleep
Mirtazapine
You let me dream, you let me dream

Mirtazapine has agency—making Williams eat but letting her dream, perhaps literally, but also allowing her to dream of a future—to even want a future. Those of us on medications are often spoken to as if the medication is the issue, not the ailment we’re seeking medication for. Antidepressants in particular are often demonized, treated like a crutch—an ironic insult, considering a crutch, like an antidepressant, is an assistive tool, not a failure of will. Williams, instead, calls Mirtazapine her “genie in a screw cap bottle,” someone she “could never be without” and so “had to write a song about her.”

Likewise, the poems in Whole, Holy, Hot treat medication as potential magic, as precious, as companion. My poems do not call the pills “she,” exactly, but they do call diagnosis “she”—shifting what could be clinical and adversarial into a female solidarity.

For these reasons, “Mirtazapine” feels like a musical counterpart to Shira Erlichman’s Odes to Lithium, a poetry collection I find enormous kinship with. Williams and Erlichman both write against the fantasy that medication dilutes the self. Instead, medication becomes part of the lyric architecture of survival: not the opposite of feeling, but one of the conditions that makes feeling—and dreaming—possible.

Williams does not, however, let relief erase complexity. When she asks, “Who am I without you now?” the line trembles between devotion and existential fear: the love-song logic of I cannot imagine my life without you, braided with the more destabilizing question of who the self is without the medication that has helped make life bearable.

9. “If She Could See Me Now” by Lorde from Virgin

While “Favorite Daughter” performs in hopes of being affirmed by someone else, “If She Could See Me Now” turns that desire inward, imagining what it would mean to be witnessed by the self who once had to survive—after the performance, after survival, and at the threshold of leaving survival mode.

The song grapples with gendered violence, and with the ways we romanticize and mythologize our own pain, trying to make suffering feel significant because otherwise it might simply be, well, suffering:

Baby, whenever you’d break me
I’d watch it happen, like an angel looking down
Ah-ah, ah
It made me a woman, being hurt like that
I can feel, don’t need fantasy
Oh, God, if she could see me now

While the chorus calls the past self “she,” the immediately preceding verse addresses that self directly as “you.” Lorde sings of “exorcising / All my demons” before arriving at the startlingly intimate claim, “Yesterday I lifted your body weight.” The past self isn’t scolded or disavowed, but addressed with the tenderness of someone eager to say: look where we’ve made it to.

10. “Family Tree” [or other song] by Ethel Cain from Preacher’s Daughter

“Family Tree (Intro)” concludes the playlist because it shares Whole, Holy, Hot’s interest in the forces that script a self before that self has language to answer back. The song is not only about inheritance, but also about ritual: family, faith, gender, shame, and fear becoming an atmosphere the speaker has to breathe, resist, and sing from.

For the first thirty-five seconds, a slow, reverberating bass line descends through a spoken sermon, as if an ominous ritual is already underway. A male voice declares, “a woman, a mother, a mother is a very special thing,” collapsing womanhood into motherhood. The sample is from Cain’s paternal great-grandmother’s funeral: what an honor for her to be carried forward in song, and what grief to hear a woman remembered through the narrow language of sanctified motherhood. But by sampling the sermon here, Cain also recovers her great-grandmother from that framing, letting her memory become something stranger, larger, and less obedient than the funeral language by itself allowed. The sermon’s logic of sacred motherhood curdles into the song’s larger claim: not even Jesus is exempt from traumatic inheritance:

Jesus can always reject his father
But he cannot escape his mother’s blood
He’ll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers
But he’ll never escape what he’s made up of

The chorus then repeats:

The fates already fucked me sideways
Swinging by my neck from the family tree
He’ll laugh and say, “You know I raised you bеtter than this”
Then leavе me hanging so they all can laugh at me

The family tree is no longer only lineage; it is gallows, spectacle, and audience. The speaker is made by the family and punished by it, raised by its logic and then left hanging inside it. That is why “Family Tree (Intro)” feels like the right place to end. Like Whole, Holy, Hot, it refuses the fantasy that naming what made you or hurt you means being freed from it. The book’s final poem refuses to smooth survival into redemption. It takes place in the after, just over the threshold of survival mode, where crossing over does not mean becoming untouched. What remains is the frightening possibility of an after: the hope that the worst might be over, and the fear that without pain at the center, the self will have to learn its own shape again.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Chrissy Martin is the author of the poetry collection Whole, Holy, Hot (Write Bloody Publishing, 2026). Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Cherry Tree, swamp pink, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere, earning nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets. She holds a PhD from Oklahoma State University and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Co-founder and Poetry Director of Arcturus, she is also an assistant professor of English at Centenary College of Louisiana.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

The anthology Black Summers explores Black joy experienced in Detroit’s urban spaces through a magnificent variety of forms including essays, creative nonfiction, poetry, and comics.

Ibram X. Kendi wrote of the book:

“Magnificently curated by Desiree Cooper, this collection is full. Like summers growing up in the urban outdoors. Like the feelings of Black people navigating Detroit’s public space. In all its insightful recollections and creative variety, Black Summers is full of pleasure, of pain, of splendor, of struggle, of home.”

In her own words, here is Desiree Cooper’s Book Notes music playlist for her anthology Black Summers:

Sunshine and Shadow: The Songs of Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors by Editor/Contributor Desiree Cooper and 28 Writers

In Detroit, summers are short but mighty. For a few months—after brutal winters and malingering springs—the sun rises before 6 a.m. and doesn’t set until nearly ten at night. Like the Whos from Whoville, Detroiters emerge from their winter burrows, and they mean business. Music is everywhere; festivals run back-to-back. Spirits are high and humidity is low. There are rooftop happy hours, block parties, alfresco dining, community bike rides, line dancing, front-porch hanging and waterfront chilling. There is no summer like a Detroit summer.

When I asked 28 Black writers from Detroit to reflect upon their hot fun in the urban outdoors, they pulled from the deep reservoir of summer joy. Their essays in Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors are replete with memories of the city’s beloved island park, Belle Isle (which is larger than New York’s Central Park); fishing in the Detroit River; close-knit neighborhoods; and pick-up games on basketball courts. But on the margins lurks a shadow that sunshine cannot dim: the legacy of racism in a city that’s been America’s poster child for racial strife, white flight, and urban abandonment. Their stories recall the 1967 Rebellion—the worst in U.S. history. The lack of recreational facilities, including swimming pools and parks. Their parents’ struggle to provide safe, outdoor sanctuaries for their children. The interruption of childhood innocence.

The following selections by contributors to Black Summers reflect that tension between sentimental longing and racial strife. Mostly, they land upon Black joy.

“Summer Breeze,” by the Isley Brothers
Selected by Desiree Cooper, editor of Black Summers and author of “We Water”

If I had to pick a theme song for Black Summers, it would be the 1970s ballad “Summer Breeze.” Not the gauzy original version by pop artists Seals & Crofts (a version I adored), but the musical rollercoaster ride by the Isley Brothers. The song opens with Ronald Isley’s haunting, falsetto heart-wish for summers at home—simple and happy. Before you know it, Ernie Isley is setting a controlled burn with his electric guitar, rocketing you from mellow dreaming to head-banging air guitar. It’s that soulful minor key (you have to listen to parts one AND two) that keeps you grounded in summer’s longing, even after the music turns into a straight-up jam.

“Your Precious Love,” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
Selected by Bridgett M. Davis, author of “Backyard Balm”

One month after the frightening and violent ‘67 Detroit Uprising, this song hit the airwaves. It was a banner year for Motown, with hits by everyone from Gladys Knight & The Pips to the Four Tops to The Supremes to the Miracles. I had four older siblings, and each one had a favorite Motown song. For me it was this one, hands down. I was just seven years old that August, but I needed “Your Precious Love.” I played that 45 over and over, its yellow and brown TAMLA label making revolutions around my little record player. Everything about the ballad captivated me—from the opening guitar licks, to those finger snaps keeping time, to Marvin Gaye’s earnest voice, to the lilting chorus: “Heaven must’ve sent you from above, heaven must’ve sent your precious love.” But it was Tammi Terrell’s sweet, pretty voice that calmed my anxious heart. I adored her! I thought she looked both like my older sister Rita, and an angel. I’d later learn that the famed R&B duo Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson wrote this soulful duet, and that both the Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performed on the song. But I didn’t know all that back then. I only knew “Your Precious Love” made me feel warm and fuzzy inside—and that summer, that was everything.

“Ngiculela – Es Una Historia – I Am Singing,” by Stevie Wonder
Selected by ZZ Claybourne, author of “The Daddy, The Isle, and The Tunnel Drive”

This song speaks to hearing the languages of love around us. It took me a while to recognize the music my father put out during summertime. Movement was how he spoke love—car rides with us where he knew we were safe. Driving was the A-side of his love language. The destination was the B-side. We’d drive to places like Belle Isle or Kent Lake, where he–and we–could enjoy the outdoors unbothered, something he didn’t get anywhere near as often as he wanted. “Ngiculela” might be a joyful song but there’s that pain that hits at about the midpoint when Stevie raises his voice to a defiant declaration/wit’s-end demand. “I AM SINGING!” he shouts, commanding folks to acknowledge the truth of Black days. Singing despite the wider world trying to steal our voices or hem us in.

“You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,”  By Funkadelic
Selected by Keith Owens, author of “Searching for Blackness in Detroit—and Finding It”

This song was a single off the album Maggot Brain by the American funk rock band Funkadelic. Released in the spring of 1971, it was my summer anthem. Being born a Black kid in Denver, my early life was a long search for my Black identity. Who were my folks, and how do I find a way to fit? I was amazed at how a famous Black group was asking those same questions. I loved artists like Funkadelic and Jimi Hendrix—Black artists who broke the molds. They forced folks to acknowledge that Blackness was however we defined it.

Maggot Brain was Funkadelic’s third studio album, released by Westbound Records in July 1971. It was produced by bandleader George Clinton and recorded at United Sound Systems in Detroit, the very city that made room for my own flavor of Blackness.

“Crazy in Love,” by Beyoncé (featuring Jay-Z)
Selected by Brittany Rogers, author of “Black Out, August 2003, Detroit”  

“Crazy in Love” came out in 2003 on my birthday, May 14. Just like me, this song is a Taurus to the core—fixated on facts, loyal beyond reason, and unembarrassed by blatant longing. When this upbeat, catchy song dropped, I was a sophomore in high school, which is shorthand for being a know-it-all teen who was often loud and wrong. So, it should come as no surprise that the boy I was so crazy in love with that spring became a boy I barely knew by the time Detroit’s sky went pitch black that August when 50 million people lost power in an outage that covered the Northeast United States, and part of Canada. I just kept blasting “Crazy in Love” at every opportunity that summer, yearning for a love of that magnitude.

 “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It,” by Stevie Wonder
Selected by Esperanza Cintron, author of “Feral Fields”

When I think of summer music I think of Stevie Wonder’s album Hotter than July, which debuted in 1980. I remember listening to the single, “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It,” while riding with my ex down the back roads of Kinshasa, Zaire. Back then, Mobutu Sese Seko was in power, a corrupt, ruthless strongman propped up by Western governments including France, Belgium, and the United States. As Stevie sang it, “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It” was an obvious reference to a man who wasn’t about to stand by and let someone else take his woman. There’s  the rising anger at “somebody picking my cherries . . .and digging in my cake.” But I will forever connect the lyrics with the endless cycle of repression by Western powers in Africa and American cities, especially those with large Black populations and/or Black/Brown political representation: rebellion, freedom, devastation, reoccupation. We know the reason for Detroit’s neglect and decay is racism. It fueled divestment that destroyed our cherries and buried our cake, but I ain’t gonna stand for it!

“Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn
Selected by Lillien Waller, author of “Listen, Children, All Is Not Lost”

In the 1970s, I LOVED Tony Orlando and Dawn. They were at their height during the summers our family spent camping at Mitchell’s Bay in Canada. “Knock Three Times” was the ideal road trip song. It played on both AM and FM radio and we as kids were allowed to sing along because my parents were certain that the two youngest of us (me and Juanita), had no idea what it was about. We just liked making the three knocking sounds.

“Wurk” by Linqua Franqa
Selected by shannon garth-rhodes, author of “The Summer Protest”

When this song came out in 2022, it felt like the song I had been waiting for. Bridging the gap between the old and new labor movements, it opens with a shout out to organized labor like big-upping a set in 90’s hip hop. Then it hums into the hook “Which side are you on my people / Which side are you on?” “Wurk” then merges a Spanish language chant, “El Pueblo unido jamas sera vencido” (“the people/united/will never be defeated”) often used at rallies and protests, with a popular labor ballad from 1931. The pulsating beat and the visualization of the historically underpaid and underrepresented workers call for organization. “Here’s my ask for all my hominids: collective bargainin’ / Amazon and Target and FedEx and Walmart and Instacart and Whole Foods til we all get what we oughta get / Workers run the company, there isn’t any argument / So are you with them are you in?” The moral question about working class solidarity that shows up as a refrain in the song is also repeated throughout my essay, “The Summer Protest.”  Are you with us or them?

“Blue in Green,” by Miles Davis
Selected by Isaiah Chambers, author of “The Poet in Their Natural Habitat”

My poem in Black Summers is about poets finding an outdoor place to be who they are. When they find that space, the poets become part of the environment, and the environment lives inside the poets, like blue in green. When I find that place among nature where I belong, I often lose my words. I become a revel of emotion. Miles Davis replicates that feeling; his wordless music overflows with meaning. The tenor and trumpet, the flirting, the anger, the joy, all exist within the song, without a word. In the same way, the flora and fauna inspire wordlessly, creating living, continuous poetry.

“Din Daa Daa” by George Kranz
Selected by Angela Atabex Lugo-Thomas, author of “Detroit Boricua”

After I left Puerto Rico and moved to Detroit as a child, I longed for my island life and my culture. I found remnants of both in the Motor City. Long before we were married, my future husband and I were students at Detroit’s Bates Academy in the 1980s. It was there that our dance teacher, Miss White (co-founder of Detroit Windsor Dance Academy), challenged us to choreograph sections of the dance club hit, “Din Daa Daa.” We loved that song so much; it gave me a chance to incorporate some of my favorite dance moves, and my hubby was one of the breakdancers. To this day, I continue dancing with the RicanStruction bomba drum and dance group through my cultural organization, La Casita Cimarrón y Yuketi de Detroit. I not only found a connection to my culture in Detroit, but I also found my “island”: Belle Isle, Detroit’s island park that we sometimes called “the Rock.” We used to spend summer evenings cruising on the Rock, listening to the beats of “Din Daa Daa.”

“My Eyes Don’t Cry” by Stevie Wonder
Selected by Rochelle Wilson-Ellis, author of “A Boatswain’s Boblo Memories”

When I was a kid in Detroit, the highlight of every summer was sailing down the Detroit River on the Boblo Boat to an amusement park in Canada. It was at least one day a year I got to spend with my mom, who was otherwise always working. That boat was magical—we had snacks, sat near the railing to gaze at the water, and bought touristy trinkets. Once, a bride came down the huge staircase to dance with everyone on the giant dance floor. I thought it was stunning—like the Titanic. That dance floor was like the heartbeat of the boat. On summer rides in the ‘70s, all the DJ had to do was play the hustle song “My Eyes Don’t Cry,” and everyone got up—young, old, Black, white—and we line danced together as a single spirit, just enjoying life, enjoying summer, enjoying being a Detroiter.  

Miscellaneous TV Theme Songs, Hard Rock and Laid-Back Soul
Selected by Chace Morris, author of “Factory of Light”

Music has always been in my life, shaping my view of the world. When I walk through the portal back to that time as a kid the first music that comes to mind is theme songs. The unmistakable harmonica of the theme to Sanford and Son (“The Streetbeater” by Quincy Jones), the rock banger that opened Baywatch (“I’m Always Here” by Jimi Jamison), or the screaming guitars of “Electrifiying” by Jim Johnston playing as WWE’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made his entrance (“If you smell…what The Rock is cooking!”).

Then there was the “me and Ma in the hot ass kitchen with Mix92.3 on high” essentials: everything Anita Baker and Sade.

…And the miscellaneous jams that shaped my journey into hip-hop, writing, and overall Black nerdom: the hip-pop “On Our Own “(Ghostbusters soundtrack),” by Bobby Brown, the hip-hop “Children’s Story,” by Slick Rick, and the jingle for Nintendo’s Street Fighter II.

Can’t pick one. All of them were the sounds and songs of an eastside Detroit child on summer break at home early mornings with little to do but hang—before he even knew how much he loved the music.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

DESIREE COOPER is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, former attorney, and editor of the groundbreaking 2026 anthology, Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, Best African American Fiction 2010, and noted in The Best American Essays 2019. Cooper’s children’s picture book, Nothing Special, is a 2023 Paterson Prizewinner and included on the NY Public Library’s “10 Best Children’s Books of 2022.” She is a founding board member of Cave Canem, a residency for Black poets; a former board member of the Furious Flower Poetry Center; a current member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective; and a fellow of Kimbilio, a residency for Black fiction writers. www.desireecooper.com

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

Meg Richardson’s coming-of-age novel Paradise Pawn is one of the funniest debuts of the year, a book as compassionate as it is hopeful.

Debutiful wrote of the book:

“A fun-as-hell coming-of-age romp. Theft, pawn shops, Florida. What more can you want from a novel that packs so much heart into every laugh? Fans of Kristen Arnett will devour this one.”

In her own words, here is Meg Richardson’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Paradise Pawn:

Paradise Pawn is my debut novel. It’s about two best friends who work at a pawn shop in Florida, based on my own experiences working at a pawn shop. Music played a huge role in my writing process for this book. 

Jackie and Kayla, the book’s two protagonists, are on the brink of starting high school, on the brink of their friendship changing, and on the brink of realizing that a plan they have been pouring their hearts into may not work out the way they hoped. 

On some days, Jackie and Kayla are aware that everything is changing, and it’s painful for them. They’re overwhelmed by nostalgia and worry. On other days, they love the power they are gaining as they grow up, and they want change to happen faster.  

I think that teenagers (and people of all ages) go through life balancing these two feelings—feeling nostalgic and sad about change on some days and feeling excited for change on other days.

Music was my diving board into pools of these two feelings as I wrote Paradise Pawn. Like Jackie and Kayla, I often get overwhelmed by nostalgia. I even feel preemptively nostalgic for nice moments long before they end. But other times, I am filled with a teenage-style belief that everything is going to work out—all my dreams, and the dreams of the people I love, are going to come true, if we are brave enough to let ourselves change. 

While I was writing Paradise Pawn, I made a playlist of songs that make me feel emotional about change for various reasons. I would blast this playlist as I walked to whatever coffee shop or library of friend’s apartment I was writing in. The songs fall into two categories—songs that make me feel like change is sad, which I’m calling “Nostalgia Songs” and songs that make me feel like change is exciting, which I’m calling “Pump-Up Songs.” I usually hit “shuffle” on my playlist, to give myself an injection of both of these feelings about change, but here I have separated them out for you. I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I enjoyed writing about them for you!

Nostalgia Songs

Love in this Club by Usher

This song came out when I was fourteen, just like the girls in Paradise Pawn. I remember it playing at the homecoming dance when I was a freshman in high school in Iowa. I thought it was incredibly romantic. I had only the vaguest idea of what a club was, or what making love was. I don’t think I even knew that “making love” meant sex. I just thought it was a poetic phrase that Usher had coined meaning “to create love” or “to get to know each other”. I remember standing in the dark cafeteria in a clump of my friends. We were a month into high school and terrified, watching other people grind, and wondering if anyone would ever want to do that with us. I was deeply moved by “Love in this Club” when it played. I loved the idea of feeling so drawn to someone else that you had to get to know them, even in a busy, crowded place. When I listen to this song now, I feel so much tenderness for me and my friends at fourteen. I wish I could reach back in time and help them through all the grinding and clubs and love that they would one day experience. I hope that people reading Paradise Pawn will get to feel a similar tenderness for their teenage selves.

Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell

This is my dad’s favorite song. It has always reminded me of him and how much I love him. When I started writing the character of Devon, Jackie’s dad, I didn’t intend to make him similar to my real dad. However, now that people are reading the book and talking about how much they love Devon, it’s clear to me that a lot of his character came from my real dad. Both Devon and my dad are incredibly hardworking, almost to a fault, but not quite. They are both remarkably good at helping their daughters through heartbreak and other confusion, in spite of the stoic, hard-nosed front they often put up for the rest of the world. “Wichita Lineman” is about a lineman at work missing a person he loves and wishing for a break, but knowing there is work to be done. There’s a soaring violin part, which sounds like love, and a plodding guitar part, which sounds like work. Devon, the dad in Paradise Pawn has often had to set aside his emotions because there is work to be done. The work he does supports the people he loves, so every time he polishes a chain or mops a floor at the pawn shop, it’s an act of love. To me, “Wichita Lineman” is an ode to hardworking people, and the ways people show love through work. I want Paradise Pawn to be an ode to hardworking people too, especially an ode to my parents. 

Big Deal by Lucy Dacus

I’ve gone to over 20 weddings of my dear friends during the course of writing Paradise Pawn. If I was ever writing and felt the need for an injection of emotion about the passage of time and its impact on friendships, all I had to do was wait for the next wedding, and I would be flooded with feelings. In “Big Deal,” Lucy Dacus captures this feeling so brilliantly with the lines, “You’ve got your girl, you’re gonna marry her/And I’ll be watching in a pinstriped suit/ Not even wishing it was me and you/so what changes, if anything?”. When I feel sad about the passage of time and my friendships changing, I sometimes ask myself, “You wouldn’t want everything to stay the same forever, would you?” and “You wouldn’t want to marry every one of your friends, would you?” and “What do you actually want?” Jackie, the narrator in Paradise Pawn is asking herself these same questions. Maybe both Jackie and I just want our friends to know—“You’re a big deal.”

Umbria by Family Consumer Science

This is a song from Will Barker’s first album, London Songs. Will Barker happens to be my younger brother, and one of my best friends and favorite artists in the world. When I was writing about the sibling-like love between Jackie and Kayla, I always thought about Will. I also thought about Will when writing about the pain of being separated from siblings, or people who feel like siblings. Will wrote this song about a trip to Spain with his high school Spanish class, and a conversation he had with his host mom there. When he went on the trip, I was in college. I remember thinking t it was inconceivable that he was having experiences in another country in places I would probably never see with people I would probably never meet. He was on his own and so was I. There were a few years when we didn’t know how to deal with this gulf. How do you go from sharing a bathroom with someone for fifteen years to needing to explain your life to them on the phone? When Jackie starts to have experiences that are different from Kayla’s, it feels inconceivable to her too. Will and I have found ways to become even closer than we were as kids. One of those ways is by sharing art we make about our lives. Though I wasn’t with Will on the trip to Spain, I can listen to the song and understand some of what he was feeling. I love the close harmonies in the song, that remind me of “A Ceremony of Carols,” which he and I sang with the children’s choir we were in every Christmas. I love that the voice singing and the fingers playing guitar belong to my brother. I would like to think that in Jackie and Kayla’s universe they will find ways to stay connected as they grow up too. 

Glitter by Eliza McLamb

I dream that Paradise Pawn will give readers the feeling that this song, and its beautiful music video, have given me. If there is ever a movie of Paradise Pawn, I would love for this song to be in it. This song captures the exact feeling of being a teenager and not wanting your friend to abandon you or abandon herself for boyfriends and the grownup world. The chorus of the song goes, “I wanna kill your boyfriend/ He could never know you/he wants to crush you in his hands/ and every time/ That you say he loves me/ I say that’s not what love means.” The narrator of the song has a combination of naivete and certainty. Jackie has a similar naivete and certainty as she narrates Paradise Pawn. I appreciate that the song takes this certainty very seriously, the way I have taken Jackie’s certainty seriously in Paradise Pawn. I think many of teenagers’ convictions about the world are right, and they deserve to be taken seriously in real life and in media. 

Pump-Up Songs

Hello by Kes 

This song will always remind me of my job at the pawn shop. I had a coworker at the shop from Barbados who loved this song, and because of her, I loved it too. We would play it in the mornings before the store opened as we were taking jewelry out of the safe and setting it up in the cases. The chorus, “Hello, hello, hello, hello” made us laugh, because we said that was what we sounded like saying “hello” to customers over and over. 

Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran 

This song also reminds me of working at the pawn shop. It would play on the radio constantly, often accompanying the sound of chainsaws and the jewelry cleaner. But it was special for another reason. One of my coworkers at the shop was from the Philippines. Whenever a guitar would come into the shop, he would fix it up and tune it. When the store was empty, he would play this song for us and we would sing along. His son and his wife lived in the Philippines and he hadn’t seen them in years. Once he played “Thinking Out Loud” for them over FaceTime. I got a little teary watching him sing this ubiquitous, but none the less beautiful love song to his loved ones who were so far away. But when the song was over, he wasn’t sad and neither were his wife and son. They missed each other, but this was their life every day, and they were making it work. I thought about this moment often when writing about characters in Paradise Pawn. I did my best to think hard about how my characters would feel about what was happening to them. I tried not to overlay my own emotions onto their lives. 

Little Red Corvette by Prince

My mom loves this song, and she used to sing the beginning of it when I was a kid as we merged onto the highway in her Toyota Camry. (When I told her I was writing about her and this song she said, “But it’s so racy! You could pick ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’”). But, I will always associate this song with her, so Mommy, thank you for giving me the okay not to use “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Somewhat like with “Love in This Club,” I didn’t know that “Little Red Corvette” was about sex when I was a kid. I loved the lines, “Baby you’re much too fast,” and “Honey you’ve got to slow down.” I felt like it was a song about being told to be less intense, but going fast and being intense anyway. My mom is incredibly hard-charging and hard-working. She has so much belief in herself and in me. She and I both talk fast and make things happen fast. When I would stay up late as a kid, making labor-intensive valentines, or making puppets for a history project that didn’t require puppets, she would say, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” to me, and I was so proud. What she meant by this was that that I was similar to her, and she understood why I had to be so intense. The girls in Paradise Pawn are told implicitly and explicitly not to want to much, not to be too intense, and to slow down. They don’t have someone like my mom to encourage them to keep their feet on the gas pedal, but I am certainly glad that I did. If I hadn’t had my mom, I know Paradise Pawn would not exist. 

Diet Pepsi by Addison Rae

To me, this song embodies the joy of summer, the joy of feeling desired and beautiful, and the joy of being connected to someone. This song came out shortly before I sold Paradise Pawn, when I had been working on it for eight years. A lot of the joy and excitement I had felt about the world of Paradise Pawn had faded at this point. After years of rejections, I was starting to think that publishing a book wasn’t in the cards for me. But, part of me still had hope, and still wanted to work on the book. To help fuel that hope, I would blast this song in my car and try to imagine what it would be like to publish the book. And now I’m finding out! 

These Are Days by 10,000 Maniacs 

I have loved this song since the moment I heard it in the opening montage of Cheaper by the Dozen when I was a kid. In the montage, Steve Martin is jogging through farm fields alone, and then he comes home to his twelve chaotic children.To me, this is a song about recognizing that the moment you are living in is a good one, and the connections you have to the people you love are precious. It’s about knowing that your world is changing, but also knowing that you’re not going to forget how special your world felt before it changed. If the words, “Never before and never since/I promise/ Will the whole world be warm as this” where in a different kind of song, they would make me cry. But in this anthemic, joyful song, it doesn’t feel like a bad thing to feel that the world is the warmest it will ever be. It feels like something to celebrate. I’ve been listening to this song a lot as I work on planning my book tour and getting the word out about preordering my book. This book was partially written out of anxiety about losing friends as our lives changed, but, ironically, publicizing the book has helped me reconnect with so many old friends. I am already preemptively nostalgic about this special time in my life, but this song is helping me remember “to be part of the miracles you see in every hour,” and to keep appreciating the people I love and the music I love while I can. 

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Meg Richardson is the author of the debut novel Paradise Pawn (Tin House/Zando).

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

Nephi Craig’s memoir Our Knives Will Save Us brilliantly melds his own history and the culinary heritage of First Nations people.

Booklist wrote of the book:

“Our Knives Will Save Us shines with Craig’s admiration for Native people as he carves out a place for himself in the world of haute cuisine without sacrificing his connection with his heritage and community.”

In his own words, here is Nephi Craig’s Book Notes music playlist for his memoir Our Knives Will Save Us:

Songs of Survivance

Song: Can It Be All So Simple|
Artist: Wu-Tang Clan
Album: Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers

This song paints a vivid picture and back in 1994, I could relate to wanting more from life and dreaming about how to get it. This song reminds me of riding my skateboard in search of freedom, identity, power and purpose as a lost young kid.

Song: Liquid Swords|
Artist: The GZA
Album: Liquid Swords

The opening of the song reminded me of my late father Vincent Craig, him being a famous singer/songwriter and how my dad fought oppression through his music, humor and how I watched him growing up. I identified then, and now, with the lyric, “I’m on a mission that ppl say is impossible, but when I swing my swords, they all choppable!” The entire song is a classic and it empowered me during all my best and worst moments in my journey to sobriety.

Song: Under The Bridge
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Blood Sugar Sex Magic

This song is the anthem of my youth. It came out the hear we moved from Apache land to Navajo land. I remember all of us young Apache kids would sing the chorus when it came on the radio or someone blasted it on a boombox. My home, my Rez, my family is “take me to the place I love, take me all the way, I don’t ever want to feel like I did that day.” Still a favorite song and matches many moments of returning home to find safety in sobriety.

Song: Heaven and Hell
Artist: Raekwon the Chef
Album: Only Built for a Cuban Linx

This song has been inspirational at every moment of my life. I often say that for indigenous peoples, the world ended once. We live on the other side of the apocalypse. This song articulates the hope and despair of this post-apocalyptic indigenous reality.  From a recovery standpoint it also reminds me to “create heaven” in the here and now, because there is no guarantee that there is anything after this. This song brings me hope.

Song: Burn Out
Artist: Get Dead
Album: Bad News

To me the lyrics, “We’re all tangled up in the barbed wire, out of bullets, out of time. The rain was horrendous, the locusts and the fire”, describe what the last days of active addiction felt like for me just before entering recovery. I found Get Dead in 2024 and Codefendants in 2025, and I mention singer Sam King in my acknowledgements.

Song: Venice Queen
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Stadium Arcadium

This is one of my favorite driving songs for both me and my oldest son. In almost all my travels in the book, this song was playing in a car, stereo, on a phone and in my earphones. From the long drives across Arizona and the American southwest, it brings vivid memories of Washington State and the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Here’s a huge shout out to PNW, Seattle & PDX!

Song: Angel’s Wings
Artist: Social Distortion
Album: Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll

Social Distortion has long been a part of my life and I appreciate it because singer Mike Ness is also a person in recovery, so I can hear the themes and messages woven into the songs. These lyrics capture what it feel like to be sober for many years, “I triumphed in the face of adversity, and I became the man I never thought Id be, and now my biggest challenge?…a thing called love. I guess I’m not as tough as I thought I was.”

Song: The Death of John Smith
Artist: NOFX
Album: The Longest Line

This song was blasting when I got into a car accident that changed my life. I often don’t like to hear this song because of the vivid memory, and other times this song brings back many fond memories of being young and hungry to start my own life. It helped me to believe in myself a little bit more.

Song: Time Tonight
Artist: John Frusciante (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers)
Solo Album: Curtains  

This song by John Frusciante encapsulates the emotion, hope, optimism, pain, clarity and love that I felt after becoming a father to my two younger children when I was about 6 years sober. My oldest son Ari and I had grown in recovery together and this song represented a new way of life, while reflecting on the life left behind. I feel deep gratitude for sobriety with this song. I would play this song as I drove my baby daughter to her daycare, and later her little brother too. John Frusciante is also in recovery, and I hear the recovery messages loud and clear.

Song: Point of No Return
Artist: Immortal Technique
Album: Revolutionary Vol. 2

I heard this song when I was struggling with constant relapse toward the end of my addiction. The angst, rage, resistance, and flow of the truth in the lyrics affirmed my right to feel legitimate indigenous rage. Later when I got sober, hearing this song also affirmed that I had passed a point of no return because I had changed, only because of the power of surrender and truth. When I gave up the need to control everything in life, I gained control over me.  

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Nephi Craig is the executive chef of Café Gozhóó in Whiteriver, Arizona, on the White Mountain Apache Tribe, and an advanced certified relapse prevention specialist (ACRPS) and behavioral health technician (BHT) currently serving as the nutritional recovery program coordinator at the Rainbow Treatment Center. Craig is the founder of the Native American Culinary Association (NACA), an organization that is dedicated to the research, refinement, and development of Native American cuisine. His work has been recognized in national and international publications such as Newsweek, Forbes, Food & Wine, and The Guardian.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s novel Wisdom Corner, a standalone sequel to Winter Counts, offers an impressive depiction of reservation life.

BookPage wrote of the book:

“Weiden’s writing is rich with cultural detail from food to ceremonies to reservation slang. His style is terse but immersive, and readers will find themselves absorbed in wandering the Great Plains and meting out justice with Virgil.”

In his own words, here is David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Wisdom Corner:

It’s a pleasure to return to Largehearted Boy with a playlist for my new novel, Wisdom Corner. Way back in 2020, I contributed a playlist for my debut, Winter Counts. I’m a huge music fan, and compiling and writing about those songs was tremendously fun.

Wisdom Corner is a standalone sequel to Winter Counts, set again on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. All of the characters in the first book are back, including Virgil Wounded Horse, the protagonist. Virgil is a hired vigilante who takes action when the federal government won’t prosecute criminal cases on the reservation, which is a very real thing. Because of a federal law known as the Major Crimes Act, Native law enforcement officers have no authority to prosecute felony crimes on their own lands and must defer those cases to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Offices. However, the FBI declines to investigate a substantial number of those cases, which results in the criminal offenders being set free. When this happens, reservation citizens may turn to hired enforcers like Virgil, who will lay down a beating on a bad person for a price. But, in Wisdom Corner, Virgil has stopped his work as a vigilante as he’s troubled by the morality of his profession and is attempting to stay on the Red Road of Indigenous spirituality. However, the murder of a prominent Lakota citizen forces him to return to his old ways as he searches for the killer.

There’s also a subplot involving the Native boarding schools. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as many as 75% of Indigenous children were forced to enroll in these institutions, where they were stripped of their Native identity and often physically and sexually abused. Even though those schools have closed, their impact resonates today in various ways, as the characters in Wisdom Corner discover.

Turning to music, I decided to use a different approach in creating a new playlist. In the playlist for Winter Counts, I listed a song that each character in the book would like, even though the characters’ musical tastes were very different than my own. For this playlist, I’ve focused on spotlighting Native American roots music from the 1960s and ’70s, as well as some current songs by Indigenous musicians. Put another way, I want to highlight a particular type of Native American music. Tunes that are based in country, rock, or soul, not necessarily powwow or traditional; the type of music that I remember my mother playing when I was a child. Being from the World War II generation, she liked big band and swing music, but also classic country like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and George Jones. As a kid addicted to rock and punk music, I disdained the music she played, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized the genius of those songs. Indeed, I listened to a good deal of Native country and roots music while I was writing the novel, as evidenced from this passage from Wisdom Corner, where Virgil muses about rez music while traveling:  “I had a long drive ahead of me, so I turned on the rez radio station and listened to the DJ spin some old country and rock music played by Natives. Buddy Red Bow, the Wingate Valley Boys, Jesse Ed Davis, John Trudell. I was a heavy metal guy, but this was music that calmed my spirit and helped me center myself.” In this playlist, I’m happy to honor those songs, classic and modern.

“Indian Love Song” by Buddy Red Bow

Buddy Red Bow was a legend in Lakota territory until his death in 1993. Not only a great country musician, his songs often contained biting social commentary about the mistreatment of Natives. He was a big hit on reservation radio stations but struggled to get his songs played nationally. Although he only released three albums, his influence in the Lakota world was immense. “Indian Love Song” has a beautiful, wistful melody, and is partly sung in the Lakota language. Also worth seeking out is his song “Black Hills Dreamer.”

“Red Dirt Boogie, Brother” by Jesse Ed Davis

Jesse Ed Davis was one of the greatest Native guitarists, along with Link Wray and Jimi Hendrix, who was proudly Cherokee. Davis played with the band Taj Mahal for years, and then did great session work with Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and others. His guitar solo on Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes” is considered to be some of his best work, but he also recorded three solo albums. Ululu, recorded in 1972, featured some of the best musicians in the country backing Davis this time. “Red Dirt Boogie, Brother” is a cool song with a strong rhythm and amazing guitar, of course, but it’s also a personal statement by Davis about his Oklahoma and Native heritage and the music that mattered to him.

“In Your Heart” by Stateline

Stateline (not to be confused with another group with the same name) is a Navajo band from the White Cone community on the Navajo reservation. I didn’t know their music until fairly recently, but I’ve quickly become a fan. They capture the plaintive and real sound of the earlier Native country-rock bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s. This song combines strong guitars and vocals along with fantastic pedal steel sounds. There were at least five other songs I could have chosen for this playlist, and I’m hoping to see this band live soon.

“My Blood Runs Through This Land” by Black Belt Eagle Scout

I’ve loved Katherine Paul and Black Belt Eagle Scout for nearly a decade, and this cool song is one of my favorites. Although the song skews more towards the alternative rock side of the spectrum, I think it captures a certain groove perfectly. The lyrics meld the personal and political in a unique and powerful way. Really great Indigenous music from the Northwest that suits the mood of Wisdom Corner well.

“Hunger Strike” by Shane Ghostkeeper

I was tremendously fortunate to work with Shane Ghostkeeper as the narrator for the audiobook for Wisdom Corner. Shane is a tremendously talented guy, being an actor in numerous films, a much-in-demand audiobook narrator, and also a musician with several albums under his belt. Shane and I chatted on the phone before the taping and discussed our mutual love of music. We also kept in close contact during the audiobook taping, and I helped with the pronunciations of the Lakota words in the book. I truly appreciated his professionalism, and I wasn’t surprised to discover that his music is amazing. This song is a wonder—fantastic lyrics and vocals, of course, but also a great melody and kick-ass guitar.

“Big Black X” by X

This song is the only one by a non-Native band, but I simply had to include it. The band X (and their country incarnation, The Knitters) have meant a lot to me over the decades; I included their fantastic song “The Have-Nots” in my earlier playlist and discussed why it’s my favorite song of theirs. Fast forward to the year 2024, when X fans rejoiced as a new studio album was released, titled Smoke and Fiction. I loved the new album, especially the song “Big Black X,” which was a throwback to the smash-and-burn musical style of their first album, Los Angeles. And the lyrics! They’re a look back by a band who’s seen it all and come out the other side, a kaleidoscopic view of the rise and fall of Los Angeles and maybe even punk rock itself. One line in the song immediately grabbed me, as it embodied the mood I was trying to capture in Wisdom Corner: “Old cars and new scars.” That lyric perfectly represents the reservation with our scattered and sacred cars dotting our lawns, and the scars that accumulate too quickly for those living on the rez.

I really, really loved that line, and fortuitously, I attended a John Doe solo show in Denver not long after the release of the album. I was able to chat with him after the show, and he was very cool and nice. I asked if I could get permission to use that lyric as the epigraph for my new novel, and he said he’d pass on my request to his bandmate Exene, who’d written it. I was thrilled, to say the least, when she emailed me and granted permission. The line indeed serves as the novel’s epigraph, and I’m delighted to include the song here.

“V Chill” by Shane Ghostkeeper

I’m returning to Shane Ghostkeeper for his wonderful song “V Chill.” This luminous song, about a baby boy’s first words, reminds me of the Lakota word for children, wakaneja, which means “sacred beings” and reflects our reverence for our little ones. It’s a gorgeous, affecting tune, and one that serves as the perfect end to this playlist.

also at Largehearted Boy:

David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s playlist for his novel Winter Counts

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, is the author of Winter Counts, which won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. He received the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship and is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Ucross, Sewanee, and Tin House. A professor of English and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University, he lives in New York and Colorado with his family.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

Kate Christensen’s novel Good Company is a compassionate and profound examination of the complexities of loss and life.

Library Journal wrote of the book:

“In probing misogyny’s legacy and the uneasy intimacies among women, Christensen delivers a bracing meditation on trust, aging, and the wreckage violent men leave in their wake.”

In her own words, here is Kate Christensen’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Good Company:

When I was young, I used to play three or four albums in a row at top volume and sing along, also at top volume, to get out of my own head. In my twenties and early thirties, I had no idea how to handle all my inconveniently outsized emotions. Rootless and lovelorn and anxious, I found fellowship and vindication in albums that met and held my powerful sadness and yearning, nostalgia and loneliness, frustration and heartache. These voices felt like my friends. Singing along with them felt like the most meaningful conversation in the world. And it was communal—these were the albums we all listened to back then. Studio apartments in every city held girls in our twenties singing our hearts out alone but together to the same music.

As I was writing Good Company, a novel about a middle-aged woman novelist revisiting her past on a book tour to promote her memoir, I listened anew to all the girls of my youth. I’m old now, long and happily married, settled in my forever home, and my pursuits are tame and seasoned ones. But I loved hearing these once-loved voices again, still young, still filled with that wild passion and yearning. It felt good to remember the bad old days, to feel how long a life is, how far I’ve traveled, how many girls I’ve loved.

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, “Trio”
Aretha Franklin, “Greatest Hits”
Patsy Cline, “Sweet Dreams”

In the early 1980s, my two younger sisters and I spent summers at our mother and stepfather’s in Barrytown, New York. We were all in college, between school years. We lay around in the green humidity, restless and barefoot in the shadowy old house where we didn’t really belong, itching to begin our lives, playing cassettes on the boom box out in the half-renovated garage where my sisters slept. From early childhood, we’d always sung together, rounds and choral pieces, songs in three-part harmony. We were all artists, a writer, a dancer, and a musician. Our alliance was fraught but deep, riven with fissures but intense. Whenever I hear “Oh have you seen my dear companion” and “I say a little prayer for you” and “I go out walking after midnight searching for you,” I think of my sisters back then, the closeness of our shared proximity, the now long-lost familiarity we could all still come back to.

Sweet Honey in the Rock, “Breaths”
Joni Mitchell, “Court and Spark”
Joan Armatrading, “Show Some Emotion”

During my sophomore year at Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1983, I lived in a pink ranch house on Lambert Street with five other women. I had a record player on the plywood bar of my windowless basement (former rec) room. I’m sure I played my music too loudly, naively thinking my housemates couldn’t hear my full-volume singing below their feet. One of my housemates was my close friend and fellow English major, Bronwen. She and I performed at Student Union coffeehouses as a duo, in a jazz band, as part of an a capella women’s ensemble, “Listen more often to things than to beings,” and “My analyst told me that I was right out of my head.” Our friendship began with instant recognition of each other at freshman orientation. We both swooned to “I’m not the sort of person who falls in and quickly out of love.” We shared a goofy, romantic, intellectual solidarity that sustained us both at that competitive school.

The Go-Gos, “Vacation”
Cyndi Lauper, “She’s So Unusual”
Eurythmics, “Touch”
Tina Turner, “Private Dancer”

The year after graduation from Reed, 1986-87, I stuck around Portland, working as a cocktail waitress at a downtown blues club called The Last Hurrah. Getting ready for work in my apartment on Woodstock Avenue, I ginned myself up for a night of hauling booze to already-drunk middle-aged men by singing along to lush, moody ballads and high-energy girl-power bop, “See the people walking down the street” and “I travel the world and the seven seas.” It took me a while to gel and spike my punk-cut hair, put on eyeliner and eye shadow, get my miniskirt and fishnets just so, crush my feet into stiletto ankle boots. One of my best friends, Michelle, worked as a stripper at a club near mine. After my shift, I’d go to Macambo and wait for her night to end, watching her slither almost naked on the pole after whipping my young body around the Last Hurrah all night like a predatory cat—it amazes me now how young and hot we both were, how sure of our sexual power: we had so much time to burn. Our entire adult lives lay ahead of us. “Tell me, do you want to see me do the shimmy again?” After she tipped out, we took a cab to her place for a slumber party to count the night’s tips in our PJs and snort a little coke before bed; “When the workin’ day is done, oh, girls they wanna have fun, oh, girls just wanna have fun.”

Tracy Chapman, “Tracy Chapman”
Kate Bush, “The Kick Inside”
Bonnie Raitt, “Home Plate”

I had undiagnosed celiac disease until I was forty. Until I did an elimination diet after 9/11 and finally stopped eating gluten, I thought this was who I was: a depressive, hotheaded, foggy-brained introvert with chronic eczema and heart-pounding insomnia. Nothing I could do about it. Oh well. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the late 1980s, I lived on refried-bean and cheddar cheese burritos made with two gigantic, floury tortillas, served with a side of buttery frozen peas. Because of this gluten-y diet, I spent a lot of time hiding out, not going to Workshop, not writing, playing Solitaire in my apartment while my two best friends left messages on my answering machine. “I’ve got some wine coolers,” came Sally’s voice, crackling with laughter. “I’m heading out to the Rez, can I pick you up?” “Give me one reason to stay here, and I’ll turn right back around,” I sang defiantly while her voice filled my little apartment at Black’s Gaslight Village, which had the size and shape and general feeling of a doublewide trailer. Then came Gretchen’s fun-filled, crisp voice: “Katie, there’s an estate sale in Solon, it’s our favorite hot auctioneer, let’s go!” I crabbily dealt out another Solitaire hand on my bedspread, singing, “And here I am again my girl, wondering what on earth I’m doing here…” After my cheap, filling, toxic-to-me supper, I filled my bathtub with hot water, poured a big slug of Jim Beam, and soaked myself into tipsy transcendence. “I’m blowing away, and shadows take my love and leave….”

Suzanne Vega, “Suzanne Vega”
Rickie Lee Jones, “Flying Cowboys”
k.d. lang, “Shadowland”

After I got my MFA, I moved straight to New York City. My first apartment was $300 a month, a roomy top-floor railroad I shared with two college friends in the crime-ridden wasteland of as-yet-undeveloped downtown Brooklyn. I worked at William Morrow as an editorial assistant for a brilliant young female editor and yearned to be one of her published writers instead. My Walkman was permanently strapped to my head in those days, filling my ears with cool, fresh, urbane voices. On Saturday mornings, I lugged a pillowcase stuffed full of dirty clothes and linens to the laundromat, walking up Fourth Avenue from St. Marks Place crooning, “I’m a shadow, but you know, I’m the one who loves you so, so please take my and and lead me out of shadowland.” On my morning commute to Manhattan, I sang on the train, not caring who heard, “Solitude stands by the window, she turns her head as I walk in the room.” Once a week, I went to lunch at a pub with my new best friend, Cathi, who worked nearby at Seventeen Magazine. We were two young ambitious 27-year-old writers just starting out, in corporate jobs, and our lunches were bubbly and festive and full of laughter. We wore tiny black miniskirts and ordered hamburgers and fries and talked about the novels we were working on. Burbling back to the office, late but knowing my boss was still at lunch herself and wouldn’t care anyway, I sang along the sidewalk as if life were just one big musical, “Don’t let the sun catch you crying, the night’s the time for all your tears…”

Joni Mitchell, “Blue”
Alison Krauss, “I’ve Got That Old Feeling”
Marianne Faithfull, “Broken English”

I spent the summer I turned 30 essentially alone in my tiny East Village studio apartment, looking out my two windows at an airshaft, hot and hungover, feeling like a hermit in a cave. I was writing so much, and it was all I cared about. The way I remember it, I had no friends that summer, no one at all. I was working as an office temp at various law firms on weekdays. I spent evenings reading my way through shiny stacks of library books in the bathtub with a bottle of wine. I remember sprawling on my futon bed with my head dangling off, half crying, “Just a little green like the color when the spring is born,” and cooking myself supper from ingredients I’d bought in Chinatown and lugged home in a pink plastic sack, “I’ve got that old feeling, you’re leaving, I’m so tired of goodbyes,” and staring moodily out at the rain dripping off my fire escape. “And all over the world, strangers talk only about the weather. All over the world, it’s the same, it’s the same, it’s the same…” 

Hole, “Live Through This”
PJ Harvey, “Dry”
Lucinda Williams, “Sweet Old World”

Julia Heimdahl, the narrator of Good Company, describes the aftermath of her compulsory weekly phone conversations with her needy, self-involved mother:

As soon as I hung up from these calls, even if it was early afternoon… I sloshed straight tequila or vodka into a glass… The alcohol loosened the knot in my chest, muted the roar of rage in my head. I blasted CDs on my boom box, P.J. Harvey, Courtney Love, Lucinda Williams, and I scream-sang along. The music and liquor blotted me out. That was the whole point. I needed to cease to exist for a little while.

I did the same thing. I hung up the phone and hit “play” and sloshed tequila into a water glass and paced around, howling “I changed the number on my phone so you can’t call me up at home,” and “Don’t you please make me real, fuck you” and “Oh my honey thighs, give me your troubles, I’ll keep them with mine.” Talking to my mother always opened up ancient wounds, filled me with helpless rage I had no idea how to even admit to myself. These tough, winsome girls brought me back to my essential self, something alive and vital in me that had nothing to do with anyone else. I knew that part of me was going to win, if only because these girls told me I’d be okay some day, over and over and over.

also at Largehearted Boy:

Kate Christensen’s playlist for her novel The Astral

Kate Christensen’s playlist for her novel The Great Man

Musician Nathaniel Bellows Interviews Author Kate Christensen

Author Kate Christensen Interviews Musician Nathaniel Bellows

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Kate Christensen is the author of nine previous novels, most recently Welcome Home, Stranger. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her essays, reviews, and short pieces have appeared in a wide variety of publications and anthologies. She lives with her husband and their two dogs in northern New Mexico.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

Lisa Owens’s novel Natural Disaster shares an compelling 24-hour glimpse of modern motherhood both profound and brilliantly comic.

Booklist wrote of the book:

“The pressures placed on the modern working mother shape Owens’ latest…Told entirely in a stream of consciousness, Natural Disaster follows the narrator’s shifting thoughts as she navigates the day…confront[ing] difficult subjects such as resentment, infidelity, and burnout, while showing how love can also feel demanding, conflicted, and hard to sustain. Owens presents a clear account of a woman trying to meet competing demands. The result is a focused study of motherhood, disappointment, and love.””

In her own words, here is Lisa Owens’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Natural Disaster:

Natural Disaster is set across a single 24 hour period. It follows a mother who is hoping to spend a lovely last day with her two small children before returning to work after maternity leave, but inevitably her plans go awry almost from the outset. These songs and pieces reflect some of the themes, moods and ideas the book and its heroine are grappling with as the day spirals beyond her control.

Perfect Day, Lou Reed

If Natural Disaster were a movie this track would play over the trailer. As well as providing a nice dose of dramatic irony, I think the song also captures something of the spirit of the novel, which on one level is about what happens when perfectionism and idealism collides with a person’s private insecurities and fears that they are not really up to scratch.  

Kooks, David Bowie

This is such a charming song, which acknowledges the bittersweet, fleeting nature of childhood – ‘soon you’ll grow’ – and I love the way it portrays the child as a benevolent figure gracing the parents with his presence. It’s so playful and joyful, which aren’t always modes accessible to the protagonist of Natural Disaster: I think if she had put Kooks on in the kitchen first thing in the morning, she might have loosened up a bit, and been able to approach the day with more levity and less anxiety. 

The Planets: Jupiter, Gustav Holst 

This piece has taken on a new significance since the ‘Sleepytime’ episode of the genius Australian TV show Bluey, which features ‘Jupiter’ as its soundtrack. There is a beautiful moment where the dreaming child perceives her mother as the sun, and the gorgeous swell of the music taps into the awesome and bewildering scope and scale of motherhood that I was trying to articulate in the novel. 

All Things Must Pass by George Harrison 

One of the most useful axioms I heard as a new parent was, ‘This too shall pass’: a vital reminder that every phase of a child’s development, whether challenging or delightful, will give way to a new set of challenges and joys – a lesson that is universally applicable to the phases of life, not just parenting. This song is hugely comforting in the way it confronts the natural, unstoppable flow of time, and the idea that nothing, however overwhelming it feels in the moment, is fixed: in my novel, I wanted the intense 24 hour structure to suggest that the protagonist’s difficult day (or days) will pass, and give way to different, possibly better ones. 

Hush Little Baby, Nina Simone

I’m sadly not a gifted singer but have nonetheless been so grateful for the existence of the humble lullaby in my time as a parent. Being able to sing a simple tune over and over, even with my musical limitations, has in times of pain or sleeplessness or distress, sometimes been the only thing that has helped to calm and soothe my children.  In my novel, the protagonist ruminates about her reliance on her phone and Google to find answers to parenting problems, and she worries whether she possesses an innate aptitude for motherhood. She finds it hard to be present and engaged in part because she is so concerned about getting it right, but like most mothers she probably does have the basic, effective, instinctive tools that would allow her to be ‘good enough’, if only she can get out of her own way and stop fixating on perfection. 

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Lisa Owens is a novelist and screenwriter. She was born in England to Irish parents, and grew up in Scotland and Hertfordshire. Her debut novel, Not Working, was published in 2016. She lives in London with her family. 

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

‘Pemi Aguda’s One Leg on Earth is a brilliant debut novel, as propulsive as it is thought-provoking and atmospheric.

Esquire wrote of the book:

“A stunning and lyrical literary horror novel set in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, where rumors contend that pregnant women are inexplicably walking into bodies of water and drowning themselves. When a 23-year-old woman named Yosoye arrives in Lagos to start her career at a prestigious architectural firm helping build Omi City―a luxury development on reclaimed land―she soon discovers her own pregnancy. Aguda was a finalist for her 2024 short story collection Ghostroots, but One Leg on Earth is even more richly imagined and deftly executed.”

In her own words, here is ‘Pemi Aguda’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel One Leg on Earth:

In One Leg on Earth, characters debate what is real. Many exist in the space of the in-between—life and death, spiritual and grounded, land and water, individual vs. collective—a zone my fiction is very interested in. Many readers have asked about the ghosts I’ve encountered, then seem disappointed to hear that the realities of my stories aren’t necessarily the realities of my own life. When I’m writing, though, I believe; when I’m writing, the strangeness and otherworldliness and absurdities are mine, too. I’ve found that music is one sure way for me to float across realities, to believe what my characters believe, and these are some songs that plunged me right into the heart of the novel’s atmosphere.

“Iemanja” by Angelique Kidjo

I’m relistening to the opening of this song and this is perhaps the vibe of the whole novel? Iemanja, Yemoja, is an orisa of water, the seas, the rivers, the mother of all orisas. I wrote many scenes to this song on loop, Angelique Kidjo—our West African songstress—calling to the mother, Iemanja, as the ocean called to the mothers in OLoE. Beloved, a mysterious character in the book, references this song, and that was my nod to the deities that were present in older drafts.

“Öppna spjäll” by Sara Parkman

Sara Parkman makes beautiful Swedish folk music. Can you listen to this without tapping into the dread of Midsommar? “Vreden” is another song from Parkman’s Vesper album that I listened to repeatedly. The guttural cries and choral screaming are fitting for unsettling fiction.

“Baby” by DakhaBrakha

I love DakhaBrakha and this song marries R&B with the more traditional Ukrainian chanting. You’re getting a sense of my writing soundtrack, yes? Give me some choral chanting, some ominous melodies, some folky sounds that evoke forests and mysteries… “Baby, show me your love” makes me wistfully sad. This story doesn’t end well, does it?

“Reincarnation” by Susanne Sundfør

This ballad for the end of the world is spare and sad and twangy and here’s what the Norwegian singer had to say: “The world will be just fine. We probably will be, too. But sometimes it looks bleak. I think we need to sing soothing ballads instead of screaming at each other when things get rough.” In OLoE, the women shriek in laughter, dancing to their deaths, and they, too, can see that the water will go on without us.

“Flama Eterna” Karen y los Remedios

Karen y Los Remedios make me happy. I’m always dancing barefoot to their psychedelic dark cumbia in my kitchen. This particular song makes me want to frolic with my sisters under a full moon.

“Barracuda” by John Cale

Hopefully the lyrics speak for me. “The ocean will have us all!”

“Preacher Man” by Aṣa

“Eyo,” which is a really good Lagos song (also referenced in the novel) should be the one on this list, perhaps, but “Preacher Man” is one of my favourite Aṣa songs. My friend, IfeOluwa, talked about walking the streets of Lagos with this song on loop and I think of Yosoye walking those streets, doing the same thing. The song is plaintive, yearning, begging, seeking, questioning. “What am I and who have I become?”

“Surrender” by Suicide

Should Yosoye surrender to her fates? Which one?

“Heavy in your Arms” by Florence & the Machine

This song was the soundtrack of my Tumblr days. Welch’s voice is magnificent here, especially the modulation in the last third of the song and the background harmonies. Glorious, this song calls directly to the younger me, and subsequently, my 22-year-old protagonist’s angst.

“I Love You” (Acoustic version) by Woodkid

Makes me sad. Makes me think of Yosoye wanting her mum’s attention. Beautiful violins. This song is in a gloomy playlist that has a lot of Agnes Obel and Daughter and Benjamin Clementine and Soap&Skin and Laura Marling, but there isn’t enough space on this list.

“Nada me Pertence” by La Doña

Ending this on an upbeat (?) note. Something angry and witchy inLa Doña’s cadence that resonates heavily with me. These sound like groovy incantations: “I offer you my empty hands, mother” and “May you give me your heart and may I eat it with chili, salt and lime.” Ha! But most importantly, “Nothing belongs to me.” Nothing belongs to us. Not wealth. Not control. Not the land. Not the water. Nothing.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

’Pemi Aguda is the author of One Leg on Earth and Ghostroots, a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Trained as an architect in Lagos, Nigeria, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

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.

Kathleen Rooney’s novel Man Overboard! is insightful, moving, and funny.

Booklist wrote of the book:

“Each of Rooney’s enthralling novels are shaped by her astute insights, poetic descriptions, and sharp wit. This bravura survival tale is endearingly suspenseful, touching, and hilarious.”

In her own words, here is Kathleen Rooney’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Man Overboard!:

My fifth novel, Man Overboard!, is a dark comedy—kind of a beach read about a guy who has no beach. It’s the story of a 33-year-old dude from Nebraska, a former college swimmer named Kick Kilpatrick, who falls (or jumps?) into the Gulf of Mexico while on a Thanksgiving cruise with his extended family and then has to spend the next 20 or so hours treading water and hoping to be rescued. It’s in the first-person present tense to maximize the tension and uncertainty of his survival. Each chapter of the book chronicles one hour of his time in the ocean. Thus, I present a 20-song playlist, one for each of Kick’s hours.

“All the Young Dudes” by Mott the Hoople (1972)

Bowie’s lyrics open with, “Well, Billy rapped all night about his suicide” and Kick is suicidal. Moreover at 33 he is a relatively young dude. The lyrics also ask “Hey dudes! Where are you?” and that’s a question this novel explores: where are dudes at these days, literally and metaphysically? What is going on with them?

“Tread Water” by De La Soul (1989)

The connection here is probably obvious—treading for hours is what Kick must do. But the song begins, “I was walking on the water when I saw a crocodile / He had daisies in his hat, so I stopped him for a while / He delivered me a message, a massage to soothe my stage.” Kick encounters a lot of sea creatures during his ordeal—whale sharks, jellyfish, seahorses, and more—and he talks to and receives messages from all of them.

“Pool Party” by Rudy Willingham (2019)

This self-released single is catchy, charming, and joyful. A competitive high school and college swimmer, Kick loves the pool as much as the kids in this song. But he is terrified of the ocean—he needs four sides and a bottom or else he panics.

“U Got the Look” by Prince (1987)

I thought about adding Prince’s song “Dolphin,” but sadly it’s not that good. (Even the greats falter.) Instead, I’m including this one because Kick thinks of it in his own quest for women, noting that sometimes just walking up to someone and hitting them with a compliment (“your face is jammin’ / your body’s heck-a-slammin’”) gets you far.

“Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches (2000)

Kick struggles with real intimacy and uses sex as a distraction. Everybody sees him as a hot jock, and he is, but he has an inner life too, and he’s struggling.

“Mannish Boy” by Muddy Waters (1955)

This is one of the best blues songs ever, and Kick has the blues. Kick’s dad is emotionally constipated and has imparted a limited idea of how to be a person to his son, in large part because of his own limited ideas about how men should behave. 

“What’s My Age Again?” by Blink-182 (1999)

Like many men raised in a culture that teaches boys to suppress almost all emotions except for anger, and maybe irony and silence, Kick is emotionally stunted. But on the flipside, he’s also boyish and fun; he’s studying in secret to become a clown. This exuberant song captures both sides of Kick’s age coin.

“Dolphin” by Linda Perhacs (1970)

“Dolphin, take me with you,” Perhacs asks in this beautiful psychedelic folk song, and in the novel, Kick asks the dolphin he meets to do the same thing. But his dolphin says no, you have to sort this out yourself.

“That Was the River, This is the Sea” by the Waterboys (1985)

Kick has to figure out if he fell or jumped into the Gulf, and if it was the latter, why he did so. The lyrics of this song capture that retrospective sense of a person trying to determine what exactly has gone wrong: “Now if you’re coming undone / Maybe been alone too long / Or just you’ve been suffering from /A few too many / Plans that have gone wrong / And you’re trying to remember / How easy your life used to be.” Kick has a lot of time in the ocean to think about how his past led to his present and what he wants his future to be, if he gets to have one.

“La Mer” by Nine Inch Nails (1999)

La Mer, of course, is French for “the sea.” Trent Reznor has said that he wrote this song during a difficult period. While renting a house on the coast of California, his intention was to make music, but he ended up spending most of that time contemplating suicide.  

“Mr. November” by the National (2005)

The whole novel takes place in November, on a single day, in fact: Thanksgiving. This song is so November-y! “I won’t fuck us over / I’m Mr. November”—Kick wants to get his act together and thinks a lot about what that will entail if he’s able to survive.

“Hello” by Poe, the Nevins Electronica Remix (1995)

The remix aspect of this song is crucial because by this point in his ordeal, Kick is tripping out. He has no idea where he is or who else might be out there and if or when he’ll be found.  The lyrics, “Mothers are trails on stars in the night / Fathers are black holes that suck up the light” reflect his contemplation of his family’s struggles with abandonment and grief and how those might have contributed to his current situation.

“Hey, Ma” by Bon Iver (2019)

Kick has not seen or spoken to his mom in over two decades, so a central conflict is whether or not, now that he has the opportunity, he should call her.

“Immer Lustig” by Guru Guru (1972)

This krautrock song’s title translates to “always funny,” “always cheerful,” or maybe “always merry.” Kick has been trying to seem okay for years, and the façade has finally cracked. The song is also over 15 minutes, and it would be fun to trance out to while you were floating in the sea, barely clinging to reality.

“Don’t Give In” by Steel Pulse (1984)

Survival stories are riveting: will this person give up and die, or will they keep fighting and make it? This song is about keeping at it:

Let faith be your shield
Let truth be your sword
Arm yourself with love
In this, mystical world of ours

Kick is seeing how mystical the world can be and that arming oneself with love is probably the best plan.

“Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” by Radiohead (2007)

Kick has conversations with many weird fishes. But the book is suspenseful and I want the reader to wonder if he’s going to make it. The lyric, “Yeah I, I’ll hit the bottom / Hit the bottom and escape” speaks to what escape might be for Kick: death or rescue.

“The Dolphins” by Fred Neil (1966)

This is the second dolphin song on this playlist because Kick encounters his dolphin twice, and both times the dolphin shows him tough love. Neill’s lyrics posit that “this world may never change,” and one of the things Kick starts to realize is that even if that’s true, he can change himself. According to Wikipedia, Neil spent the last 30 years of his life working on dolphin conservation. This book has an ecological theme—it grieves the damage we are doing to this planet—so Neil’s efforts are apt.

“Shine a Light” by Spiritualized (1992)

The first time I heard this song I thought it sounded like dying in a dissipated and protracted way. This is for when Kick’s been in the ocean for hours and hours and is drifting in and out of consciousness, really close to death.

“Leave the Light On” by Chris Smither (2006)

This song hits me in my reptile brain and makes me cry every time I hear it—it’s a gorgeous meditation on life and time, sweet, defiant, and anthemic. “I’ve been left for dead before, but I still fight on”—hell yeah. I love my characters so much, even when they’re being assholes, and this is a song that loves people in all their complicated, frustrating glory.

“Ocean” by Tomo Nakayama (2025)

According to KEXP, the radio station where I first heard this song, Nakayama wrote this in a workshop with producer Brian Eno. “One of the assignments was to write a song of revolution,” Nakayama says. “He told us to imagine what kind of world you want to live in.” Kick has the chance to reimagine his world. “Who says it’s a crime / To seek a place to belong / A future worth saving / And a land to call home / I’m not gonna turn / I’m not gonna turn away.” If Kick gets to return to land, he’s going to face what needs facing—no more hiding, no more fear.

also at Largehearted Boy:

Beth Rooney and Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for their children’s book Leaf Town Forever

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her novel From Dust to Stardust

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her poetry collection Where Are the Snows

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her novel Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her book René Magritte: Selected Writings

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her novel O, Democracy!

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her novel Robinson Alone

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her memoir Live Nude Girl

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her poetry collection Oneiromance

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Kathleen Rooney is the nationally bestselling author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, as well as Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and From Dust to Stardust. She has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books. Kathleen’s criticism can be found in The New York Times, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and beyond. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.