The Perfect Pairing: Music and Literature
Evergreen Reads
For me, music and reading (and writing) have always gone hand-in-hand. I learned to read nearly the same time I began learning how to play the piano by ear. For me, there’s an innate musicality to writing, and anything music-related often makes a book climb to the top of my favorites list, whether it’s a book explicitly about music or a musician, or simply a book with a musical quality (such as lyrical prose, melodic, flowy writing, etc.).
It’s thrilling to be able to combine two things I love dearly. In order to not be too one-dimensional in my reading recommendations this month, I wanted to curate a wide variety of music-related books.
A memoir by a musician on starting a band, pondering identity, battling grief: Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner
Admittedly, I’m the type of person who doesn’t like to read memoirs by famous people, because I often feel like it’s either not good writing, or they’re just writing because their agents or whoever advised it. Crying in H-Mart has changed my tune.
Crying in H-Mart is a memoir written by Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast. This memoir follows Zauner through her adolescence as one of few Asian American kids in Eugene, Oregon, to spending time with her halmoni in Seoul, to creating her band and meeting her husband, to the cancer diagnosis of her mother. Throughout, Zauner’s muses on food, familial relationships, music, etc. string together this masterpiece of a memoir that is both heartbreaking and beautiful, and gave me and even deeper appreciation for her music.
There’s something about being able to read a person’s innermost thoughts, feelings, fears, and musings on grief that allows you to hear the music they produce in a more contemplative, appreciative way.
A novel about music in a dying time: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Ever since I sunk my teeth into The Hunger Games series as a young teenager, I’ve been obsessed with post-apocalyptic dramas. As an avid reader and writer, however, I do feel like I cheated with Station Eleven. Why? I watched the HBO adaptation first. I know, horrible.
I loved it so much I checked every library and bookstore until I found a copy of the novel–which I read in a day. While there are some pretty massive stylistic and plot differences between the two mediums (and, can’t believe I’m saying this, but the show was way better), the book is still pretty cool.
The premise is that an illness wipes out most of the population. From the tattered ruins of society, the Traveling Symphony forms—a group of artists, musicians, performers, etc. who travel via caravans from “city” to “city,” performing Shakespeare and classical music. While music is not the sole focus of the novel, its importance and presence shines throughout, as we watch characters try to rebuild a new sense of normalcy after nearly everything they know and love has been demolished.
A collection of essays on music journalism, being a black man in America, legends in music, and so much more: They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraquib
This one has been on my to-read list for a while now, and I think it’s time it moves to the top. One thing I’ve always told people I love is when poets go on to write more than poetry. There’s something special about poets, and when they infuse nonfiction and fiction with that bit of magic they possess, it creates something so special, I can hardly stand it.
I believe the same is true for Abdurraquib in this collection of essays. He writes about Chance the Rapper, Schoolboy Q, Carly Rae Jepsen, Fall Out Boy, Whitney Houston, and so many more musical artists. Interspersed throughout these essays are works about growing up, his childhood, his neighborhood, examining the sociopolitical climate of today through his own interactions with the police as a Black man in America, and more.
Kailee Haong
Kailee Haong is a queer writer and editor. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. Her work has been published in Split Lip, Moss, The Inlander, Spokane Coeur d’Alene Living Magazine, Lilac City Fairy Tales, and elsewhere. She writes & resides in the Pacific NW.
