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November 4, 2019
Steph Cha's Playlist for Her Novel "Your House Will Pay"
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.
Steph Cha's novel Your House Will Pay is ambitious and suspenseful, an unforgettable literary thriller.
The San Francisco Chronicle wrote of the book:
"A propulsive, well-told, and most important of all, well-researched journey of two families. . . . Cha’s writing is memorable and often poetic."
In her own words, here is Steph Cha's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Your House Will Pay:
Your House Will Pay is set, for the most part, in present-day Los Angeles, but its roots are in the tumultuous early ‘90s, when racial tensions and social unrest culminated in the ’92 L.A. Uprising. The book follows two Angelenos—a black man in his 40s and a Korean-American woman in her 20s—with different cultural references and understandings of history. As a result, the playlist is a bit of a schizophrenic list of classical music, K-pop, and gangster rap.
I’m not going to insult you by pretending to have in-depth knowledge of early ‘90s hip-hop, but the fact is, that’s the music that defines that era of L.A. history, so I kind of studied it like the least cool person in the world while I was writing this book. The working title of Your House Will Pay was Black Korea for the first three years, and when I finally decided that wasn’t going to work, I combed through Ice Cube lyrics like other writers raid Shakespeare and the Bible (full disclosure, I definitely also looked to the Bible). I guess I’ll kick off this playlist with the song that finally gave me my title.
“Batterram” by Toddy Tee
Toddy Tee was one of the first big hip hop stars to come out of L.A., and 1985’s “Batterram” is his most famous and well-remembered song. “Batterram” was the popular term for an armored police vehicle used to bash into suspected drug houses—a pretty blunt symbol of the tensions between black L.A. and the LAPD that would come to a head with the beating of Rodney King. One of the last lyrics of the song: “And Mister Rockman, you better stop some day/Hang it up homeboy, your house will pay.”
“Keep Ya Head Up” – Tupac Shakur
My novel is based on the 1991 murder of a black teenaged girl named Latasha Harlins. I fictionalized her murder because I was writing a present-day story about the people left behind, but I wanted to be explicit about where the book came from and pay respect to that history. I pulled one of my epigraphs (“We ain’t meant to survive, ‘cause it’s a setup”) from “Keep Ya Head Up,” Tupac’s iconic 1993 ode to black women, dedicated to the memory of Latasha Harlins. It’s a catchy song that has a lot to say. This on babies, for example: “And since a man can’t make one/He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one.” Tupac has another song that doesn’t quite belong on this list, but that I’ll mention anyway—“I Ain’t Mad at Cha.” I had a cousin who became involved in a gang and died of a gunshot wound while I was writing this book. He loved Tupac, and his Instagram handle was a variation on “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”
“I’m Dreamin’” – Christopher Williams
The opening sequence of my book is based on a real riot that took place in Westwood on the night of the New Jack City premiere in March 1991, in the two-week period between the Rodney King beating and the Latasha Harlins murder. “I’m Dreamin’” is a fun new jack swing song on the movie’s soundtrack that became a #1 hit R & B single. My characters never make it inside the theater—the premiere is canceled on the claim that tickets were oversold, a claim found suspicious by the mostly young, black moviegoers, who felt they weren’t wanted in Westwood. Instead Shawn (one of my two protagonists, then a 13-year-old boy) and his sister Ava find themselves mesmerized by the riot that unfolds around them.
“Arabesque No. 1” – Claude Debussy
Ava Matthews shares some biographical information with Latasha Harlins, but her personality and interests are her own. I wanted to address the exceptionalization of a certain class of black victims, the uncomfortable reality that dead black people—even children—are judged on whether they were model citizens, good students, as if these things have anything to do with the injustice of losing their lives. Ava is a piano player and a fan of classical music. She listens to Debussy on her Walkman while hanging out with her friends, waiting to watch New Jack City. Debussy was my favorite composer when I was in high school, playing piano. I played “Arabesque No. 1” for a number of recitals and competitions. It’s a gorgeous song, and one of the few I can still play well as an adult.
“Valley Girl” – Frank Zappa
Grace Park, the second of my two protagonists, is, like me, a Korean-American woman from the San Fernando Valley. I don’t think the valley girl stereotype was ever meant to encompass Korean girls (especially not in 1982, when “Valley Girl” was recorded), but I’ve always had some valley pride, and this song specifically references Encino, where I grew up (Grace grew up in Granada Hills). Frank Zappa didn’t like the San Fernando Valley, and “Valley Girl” is a harsh send-up of vapid Valleyness. Grace may not use much valspeak, but she is very much clueless, in her own sheltered world.
“Gasoline” – Jinusean
Like a lot of second-generation Korean Americans I know, I listened to a lot of K-pop growing up. I don’t know of any mainstream American music that came out of Korean Los Angeles in the ‘90s, but American music, and hip hop in particular, had a large impact on modern K-pop, which really came into being in that time period. Seo Taiji and Boys, widely credited with ushering in this new age of K-pop, came out with “Nan Arayo/I Know”—a Korean new jack swing—in 1992. “Gasoline” by Jinusean came out in 1997. It’s a Korean hip-hop song explicitly influenced by the gangster rap of L.A. Singer Jin-woo Kim is from California, and the music video features black and Korean men dancing in prison jumpsuits. Grace might be a little young to remember this song from when it first came out, but I trust that she found it when she started listening to K-pop.
“The Farewell Waltz” – Chopin
Ava Matthews was a piano player who won a youth competition with her rendition of Frédéric Chopin’s Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 69, No. 1, also known as “The Farewell Waltz,” a beautiful, melancholic piece Chopin wrote for the artist Maria Wodzińska, his former fiancée. Much was made of this fact after her death, due in part to the work of a well-meaning white reporter who wrote the definitive book on her life and murder, calling it “The Farewell Waltz.” Now in his 40s, Shawn is resentful of his sister’s public image as piano-playing angel, finding it sentimental and reductive. Meanwhile, his Aunt Sheila—who raised both Shawn and Ava—is willing to accept and promote any narrative that keeps her niece’s memory alive.
“Haru Haru/Day by Day” – Big Bang
Grace is 27, living with her parents in the house she grew up in, sleeping in her childhood bedroom, the posters on the walls still the same ones she put up in high school. One of these is for the Korean boy band Big Bang. Over the last year or so, two of the band’s four members have become mired in scandal, but in the mid-aughts, Big Bang was the biggest thing in Korean music, one of the acts credited with popularizing K-pop abroad. I remember listening to “Haru Haru/Day by Day” in my early 20s when I was going to Korean clubs, and when Grace would’ve been the right age for obsessing over boy bands.
“Black Korea” – Ice Cube
“Black Korea” is a short, confrontational song on Ice Cube’s seminal 1991 album Death Certificate. It has some pretty ugly lyrics about Koreans—“oriental one penny countin’ motherfuckers,” “chop suey ass.” Ice Cube wrote a public letter after meeting with the Korean American Grocers’ Association in February 1992, clarifying that he respects Korean Americans, and that the song was aimed at a few stores where he and his friends had had problems. In the years leading up to the Latasha Harlins murder and the L.A. Uprising, Korean immigrant-owned businesses—most visibly corner stores/liquor stores/groceries—were a dominant presence in South Central. The interactions between Korean business owners and their black customers were often fraught, hostile, and fearful, exacerbated by cultural differences, miscommunication, and, of course, outright racism. These tensions became explosive when liquor store owner Soon Ja Du murdered 15-year-old Latasha Harlins and received a sentence that carried no jail time. “Black Korea” was seen as a response to Latasha’s murder, and Ice Cube was accused of inciting violence against Korean business owners: “So pay respect to the black fist/Or we'll burn your store right down to a crisp/And then we'll see ya/Cause you can't turn the ghetto into black Korea.” 2,300 Korean-owned stores were burned down to a crisp in the six days of the Uprising, though it’d be a stretch to trace all that arson to this one song. The resentment and rage were already there—“Black Korea” just captured them in this 46-second track.
“Montagues and Capulets” – Sergei Prokofiev
One more classical piece, both because it’s thematically appropriate and because I love to play it—it’s a wonderful angry song to bang out on the piano. “Montagues and Capulets” is from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, based on the Shakespeare play. My book doesn’t have much in the way of romance, but it is about two families on opposing sides of an intergenerational conflict, both plagued by violence and death. It’d make for a pretty angsty ballet.
“Goodbye, Goodnight” – Jars of Clay
Most of the characters in this book were raised Christian, and many of the themes are classically biblical—sin and redemption, punishment and repentance, fire and brimstone. Like almost every other second-generation Korean American I know, I grew up going to church (my paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister), and a lot of the first stories I ever heard were from the Bible. I also went through a super-religious phase in middle school, and I spent those years listening to a whole lot of God rock. Most of it was not very good, but I still like Jars of Clay, and this song is kind of on theme: “Say a prayer for recognition, kiss the ones you love/Gather up the ammunition, sigh for all the lost/Strike up the band to play a song as we go waltzing by/And fake a smile as we all say goodbye.”
“Monsters Calling Home” – Run River North
Run River North is an indie folk-rock band out of L.A. Its members are all Korean-American, and they must be one of the most prominent Korean-American musical acts in existence. “Monsters Calling Home” is off their first album (put out in 2014, the year I started writing this book), and it’s all about their immigrant parents, people who moved to the U.S. from another country, only to become “monsters” in the eyes of their American-born children. This is a major theme of my novel—the second generation passing judgment on the first, despite reaping the benefits of their parents’ choices. Also, in very Korean L.A. fashion, I’ve known Run River North’s frontman Alex Hwang since college. He went to school with one of my best friends, and though we never crossed paths there, we attended the same Korean church in the valley. My uncle was a pastor there after my grandfather retired, and his family and Alex’s family were close. Alex’s brother was one of my cousin’s pallbearers.
“The Predator” – Ice Cube
I’ll end this playlist with one more song from Ice Cube. This one’s the title track off of The Predator, Ice Cube’s third album, released in November 1992. The song makes several references to the L.A. Uprising, including this one: “Fuck Laurence Powell and Briseno - Wind and Koon, pretty soon/We’ll fuck them like they fucked us and won't kiss ’em/Riots ain't nothin’ but diets for the system.” Powell, Briseno, Wind, and Koon were the four police officers who beat Rodney King, and whose acquittal sparked the six destructive days of riot and rebellion. “Riots ain’t nothin’ but diets for the system” sounds like Ice Cube’s version of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous line, “A riot is the language of the unheard,” said in a speech in 1968, over 50 years ago. It’s been 27 years since 1992, and while some things have changed, we still live in a country marred by inequality and injustice and straight-up marching white supremacists. Sure feels like the system is due for another diet, doesn’t it?
Steph Cha and Your House Will Pay links:
Associated Press review
Kirkus review
Library Journal review
Los Angeles Review of Books review
Los Angeles Times review
Publishers Weekly review
All Things Considered interview with the author
Dead Darlings interview with the author
Longreads interview with the author
Los Angeles Daily News profile of the author
OTHERPPL interview with the author
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