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April 15, 2021
A.E. Osworth's Playlist for Their Novel "We Are Watching Eliza Bright"
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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
A.E. Osworth's novel We Are Watching Eliza Bright is an inventive, compelling, and incredibly timely debut.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"Osworth offers a sharp take on the deeply disturbing misogyny that lurks online as well as a hopeful look at combating it."
In their words, here is A.E. Osworth's Book Notes music playlist for their debut novel We Are Watching Eliza Bright:
A Sixsterhood Soundtrack
When I started writing We Are Watching Eliza Bright, I had no notion of The Sixsterhood. I also had no notion that I was trans. I think, somehow, the two are related.
My book is a fictionalization of events surrounding Gamergate, reset in an immediate post-2016 Presidential election New York City, and it’s largely narrated (collectively and unreliably) by Reddit. Their eyes follow Eliza Bright, a young programmer who runs afoul of the incels, gamers and men’s rights activists who populate the manosphere. She is a cis woman—a gender that I thought was squarely in my lane. I would have sworn up and down that this was something I had in common with the character I was writing.
After coming out as trans and starting to take testosterone, I rewrote a large section of the book. In it, Eliza takes shelter for her own safety with a queer collective, all artists, that lives in a warehouse in Queens. They call themselves The Sixsterhood. My editor, Seema Mahanian, pushed me to elevate them from a set of characters to a second collective narrator. The Reddit narrators are extremely interesting, extremely effective at building tension—and they’re extremely mean. In The Sixsterhood, we have the ability to take a breath and rest from the sneering, ironic Reddit collective. I was able to dig deep into my own community—the way my people speak, the way they conceptualize abundance, the way they show up for each other—to find The Sixsterhood’s voice. I would not have had the ability to hear our music before I discovered my own.
I Love It by Icona Pop, featuring Charli XCX
The Sixsterhood is queer and kind and an intentional fortress-oasis in the midst. But first and foremost they are an exuberant collective of artists and performers who value excess. This song is all about their aesthetic ethos: “You want me down on earth but I am up space.” They are going to do whatever it is they would like to do, and they don’t care. They love it. I picture a group dance party in the circus studio (yes, they have a circus studio), one or two of the Sixsterhood whirling through the air as they jam out to this one.
Electric Lady by Janelle Monáe, featuring Solange
Fellow writer and a member of my MFA cohort Julie Goldberg has always written with music (and has always had impeccable taste). She was a member of my thesis group and she made me a playlist, specifically with Eliza in mind. This was on it. And yes, it was a song for Eliza (specifically, about her relationship with her gaming avatar) but I have to include it here because, ultimately, Eliza is part of the Sixsterhood (albeit adopted under pressurized circumstances). The Sixsterhood shelters Eliza without a lot of question—they do it because it is good and right and because Eliza is one of Suzanne’s people. Suzanne is a member; that means Suzanne’s people are the Sixsterhood’s people, too.
Let’s Have a Kiki by The Scissor Sisters
This song features a collective in conversation with each other—a kiki is group hang, specifically a queer one (and, as is much of queer linguistics, originally a Black queer term), and its particular function is gossip and telling stories to each other. The inside of the Sixsterhood is often a giant intentional kiki. Aside from the song being fantastic, it emphasizes the community coping and healing mechanism of communication in the face of adversity.
Gay Sex by Be Steadwell
Every year for a good many years, I was a staffer at A-Camp, which is run by the website Autostraddle (a digital magazine by and for queer people where I worked for seven years). Camp is a gathering of 300 gay adults at a summer camp; I run a whiskey tasting and shepherd a cabin of babes into becoming a group of people who couldn’t imagine never having met. It is, in short, one of the most glorious, frustrating, transformative experiences of my whole entire life. So many of my friends and extended community members are rooted deeply into my life as a direct result of this great experiment to which I contributed for so long.
And that’s where I met Be Steadwell and listened to her music for the first time. It’s this connection to community that drives me to include “Gay Sex,” but also because the queer bodily opposition to scarcity, austerity and violence that The Sixsterhood calls into the book is perfectly echoed here. Plus: Eliza can hear everything The Sixsterhood does from where she’s staying in the warehouse. This song is fitting in more ways than one.
NYC by JR JR
A line in this song is actually referenced in the book—“the center of the universe is boring”—so I had to include it here. The Sixsterhood is in New York City (Queens, specifically) and, as we can all attest after the plague year we’ve just had, sheltering in place for safety is mind-numbing. Even—especially—in the middle of one of the most dynamic cities in the world.
A side note: it feels strange, sometimes, to have rooted the Sixsterhood in New York City when its inspiration—a real queer collective called The Octagon—was, during its existence, very much of its home city of San Francisco. But it was an intentional choice. New York City is a really hard city in which to live. Everything is so expensive and so many things feel extremely difficult to do as a result; schlepping thirty pounds of laundry eight blocks feels like an accomplishment, the hot close quarters of grocery shopping a battle, making rent a war with odds and capitalism. The Sixsterhood’s Queens location isn’t only one of plot-convenience (it can’t be, and remain satisfying). It’s a wish. A wish upon New York City to be able to support this kind of living, something that is rapidly becoming less and less accessible.
Shake It Out by Florence and the Machine
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Even as the Sixsterhood is a reprieve and an ultimately-kind entity (though they are certainly not perfect), Eliza is at rock bottom while she’s here. This is my rock bottom rock out (or one of them). Eliza does shake it out. And perhaps she would, if she is anything like me, scream sing this to herself in the middle of the warehouse when she needs a boost through it.
Crowded Table by The Highwomen
I hadn’t ever really listened to a lot of country until I moved in with my current pod, a group of six queer people who have a healthy love for the genre. They’re big fans of Brandi Carlile, who’s done amazing virtual concerts throughout the pandemic, and the first time I heard this song it was sitting next to my people, the summer sun filling our windows and warming the floor under our feet, Brandi and her own chosen family projected onto the screen in front of us as they played guitar and sang. Like everyone, I had a rough 2020. I was depressed enough to be unable to conceptualize my own future and articulate what I wanted out of it. Hearing this song crystalized how I wanted and needed to hope for myself. It helped me understand that one reason I love collectives—and collective narrators—so much is because I want a house with a crowded table. I began the final round edits on the book shortly after. I was able to add the last bit of sparkle to The Sixsterhood—and its impact on Eliza’s mental well-being and physical safety—fueled by my own love of a boisterous gathering in a house full of chosen family.
Still by Geto Boys
This song is also referenced in the book at a pivotal Sixsterhood moment. I won’t spoil it, but you should know it is a reference to Office Space.
Closer by Tegan and Sara
Would it be a gay collective playlist without Tegan and Sara on it? I submit to you no, it would not. I consider this the very best song to close any queer party or any queer playlist. While the song is romantic in its connotations and brings with it all the weight that a traditional view of romance has, I’m using it here to end on the note that the Sixsterhood’s bond is a kind of romance. A love. Nearly always, even when they are taking their individual space, they want to be closer to each other. To themselves.
A.E. Osworth is Part-Time Faculty at The New School, where they teach digital storytelling to undergraduates. They've spent eight years writing all over the internet, including a stint as Geekery Editor for Autostraddle. Their work has also been published in Quartz, Mashable, Electric Literature, Guernica, and Paper Darts, among others.
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