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April 28, 2019
Mathangi Subramanian's Playlist for Her Novel "A People's History of Heaven"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Mathangi Subramanian's novel A People's History of Heaven captures the strong spirits of the women who fought for their Bangalore neighborhood.
Booklist wrote of the book:
"The power of these fierce young women shines in spite of their circumstances, and they prove just how beautiful and influential a strong, unconditionally accepting community is. Subramanian is a remarkable writer whose vibrant words carry a lot of heart. This inspiring novel is sure to draw in readers with its lyrical prose and endearing characters."
In her own words, here is Mathangi Subramanian's Book Notes music playlist for her novel A People's History of Heaven:
A People's History of Heaven is the story of five girls – Banu, Deepa, Padma, Joy, and Rukshana - and their mothers who fight to save their beloved Bangalore slum from being destroyed beneath the wheels of the city’s bulldozers. I wrote it over the course of six years, while living in Bangalore and Delhi, both of which are noisy places. Sometimes, the sounds of autos honking, dogs howling, street vendors screaming, and motorcycles revving put me in exactly the right mood to tell a very loud, very Indian story. Other times, I needed something to cover up the clatter, so I made myself a playlist.
Whenever I write to music, I limit myself to songs that I know really well. Otherwise, I find myself concentrating on the lyrics and the harmonies and all the other magic, and not, you know, on the writing, which is what I am supposed to be doing. Consequently, this list is largely populated with songs from the 1990s and 2000s, songs that I have been listening to for the better part of my adult life. A couple of the songs aren’t in English. This is because my family and I speak a bunch of different languages, as do the characters in my novel, and it helped me to listen to artists from a lot of different linguistic backgrounds as I was writing.
So here it is: my playlist for A People's History of Heaven, which I recommend as background music both for reading my novel about being unapologetically yourself, and for when you’re looking for some songs to fill you up with self-love.
Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos
I’m still not completely sure what this song means, but when I was in high school, a super popular kid at told me that cornflake girls are all the same – manufactured like cornflakes – and raisin girls are unique. From that day forward, I declared myself a proud raisin girl. The song reminds me of Banu, one of the book’s five main characters, who is a quirky nonconformist. If she had grown up in the suburbs with me, I’m pretty sure she would’ve loved Tori Amos.
Family Affair by Mary J. Blige
I love this song for a lot of reasons, but I especially adore the way Blige plays with language and rhythm. Hateration, holleration, and dancery are some of my favorite words of all time, and I love the way the urgency of the strings somehow amplifies the danceability of the perucssion. This song reminds me of Deepa, whose no-nonsense attitude holds Heaven’s chosen family together.
Moongil Thotil by A.R. Rahman
If you are not listening to A.R. Rahman, go make yourself a playlist and then thank me for changing your life. A.R. Rahman is a Tamil songwriter whose work you may have heard on the soundtrack to Slum Dog Millionaire. I love the fact that he converted from Hinduism to Islam because he loves Sufi culture. (How cool is that?) This song is from the Tamil movie Kadal, and I love it for its chorus, which, loosely translated, means, “For me, it’s enough, it’s enough / I don’t need anything else / this is enough.” This song reminds me of Padma, who moved to Bangalore from a rural area much like the village in Kadal, and who is deeply affected by her family’s struggle to figure out what, exactly, counts as enough.
Limon Y Sal by Julieta Venegas
I love the way Mexican artist Julieta Venegas incorporates the accordion and other traditional instruments into her music. Her instrumental arrangements are so deeply textured, and are the perfect counterpoint to her clear, sincere voice. I especially love this song because it’s about accepting other people for who they are, straight up, like a shot of tequila. (Hence the name, lime and salt.) The song reminds me of Joy, who is a transgender character who insists on loving herself and her friends unflinchingly, uncompromisingly, and unapologetically.
Zombie by The Cranberries
I told you this list was 1990s heavy! This song alternates between melancholy verses and a menacing chorus, so it was perfect for writing about a group of women facing down a bunch of bulldozers. I also love it because I love angry women, and I so rarely hear their voices in music or on the page. The song helped me write Rukshana, who deals with grief, frustration, and even love through a lens of barely controlled rage.
Every Ghetto, Every City by Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill is superbly talented, but I especially love the way she layers her own voice in this song to make it sound like a chorus. This is exactly what I was trying to do with the book’s voice: people have asked me who the narrator is, and the answer is whoever you want it to be, but the intention was for it to be a collective, greek chorus of the girl’s voices. This song is wonderfully nostalgic without shying away from reality, and I love the joy in Hill’s voice as she sings it.
Feeling Myself by Beyonce and Nicki Minaj
I adore Beyonce and Nicki Minaj, and when they produced a song together, I felt like someone in the universe granted my heart’s most secret wish. This self-love anthem has amazingly catchy lyrics and a high-power hook, but it also has the best video, which involves Beyonce and Minaj fooling around on camera and clearly having the best time. This song isn’t for a character, but for myself: it’s my antidote to self-doubt, and it’s still the song I listen to before book events give myself confidence. If you ever see me at an event moving my lips incoherently, I’m probably repeating “pretty on fleek” to get myself to calm down.
Mathangi Subramanian and A People's History of Heaven links:
Booklist review
Foreword Reviews review
Kirkus review
New York Times review
Publishers Weekly review
Paste interview with the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
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