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July 14, 2021
Katie Crouch's Playlist for Her Novel "Embassy Wife"
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.
Smart and funny, Katie Crouch's Embassy Wife is a satirical novel that is hard to put down.
The New York Times wrote of the book:
"[A] sharply observed satire of the white-savior complex and the poisonous legacy of colonialism."
In her own words, here is Katie Crouch's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Embassy Wife:
Embassy Wife is novel about three women who live in Namibia: Amanda, Persephone, and Mila. One is a “trailing spouse”, one is a State Department wife, and one was born in Namibia. Their lives intersect, exposing old secrets and testing their marriages and personal values. Despite that somewhat dramatic description, it’s also pretty funny most of the time.
Neo, by Elemotho
Elemotho is probably Namibia’s most well-known musician at the moment. He plays the acoustic guitar accompanied by drums and sings in English and Setswana. I’m going to include two of his songs on this playlist, because if Embassy Wife were a movie, he would do the soundtrack. I just love his music. I think everyone should listen to this guy.
Sugarman, Sixto Rodriquez
Sixto Rodriguez, the subject of the documentary Sugarman, recorded in the '70s but his songs really became huge in South Africa and Namibia in 1991, when his CD was released. Mark (Amanda’s husband in Embassy Wife), who was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1994, definitely would have heard this song playing at Jojo’s, the bar where he first met his long-lost love, Esther. The rhythm of the song is super sexy, and it just sort of sounds like the haunting of love that got away.
Crash, Dave Matthews
Persephone, the most comic of the main characters, went to University of Virginia in the 90’s. I don’t know if any of you readers remember the legendary Dave Matthews concerts in Charlottesville back then, but at the time those bootlegs were EVERYWHERE. My guess is Amanda, who was painfully unsentimental, found this music underwhelming. But Persephone and her sorority sisters were definitely in their frilly dorm rooms, swooning to Crash.
Box of Rain, Grateful Dead
Mark is the kind of preppy, soulful guy who, driving around or hanging in his apartment in his twenties, would have listened to this song over and over. I can’t explain how I know that, except that I know this character backwards and forwards, and that’s the one he would put on repeat.
Neria, Oliver Mtukudzi
Oliver Mtukudzi was Zimbabwe’s most famous musician. He has a beautiful voice and was a huge activist against Mugabe. I’m pretty sure Mila would have listened to a lot of Mtukudzi when she was struggling as a waitress in Okahandja. Frida also plays his music at her house in Katutura a neighborhood where music is always, always playing.
Hakuna Matata from The Lion King
I have to include this song, because every safari lodge I visited played the Lion King soundtrack in the restaurants. It was depressing, because the Namibians I met really didn’t connect with that movie or music. But it sort of encompasses how Namibians see us, and how they feel pressured to create this Disneyland version of their country to attract tourists, because of our we act when we visit.
On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter
I often listen to cinematic music when I’m writing pivotal scenes. This song has been in million movies, and every time I listen to it I grow really emotional. I imagined this playing when Amanda is running to get to Mark before he realizes Mila, her best friend, is the woman he’s been looking for all of these years. She’s been dismissive of her husband for years, as he’s been a little lost, and she’s been moving away from him emotionally. But when she we realizes she actually might lose him, she ditches the car in the middle of stand-still traffic and throws off her shoes and just runs in the searing heat.
Work it by Missy Elliott
There’s a scene where Amanda walks in on her daughter and Mila’s daughter listening to a singer named Sextopia. She doesn’t exist, but I pictured her lyrics being super sexual, just exactly what you don’t want your innocent daughter rocking out to. Anyway, I just walked into my eleven-year-old wiggling around to Work It, which propelled me into an hour of silent panic. So this seems to fit.
Pata Pata by Miriam Makeba
I just love this. It’s on repeat all the time. No specific tie to Embassy Wife, but everyone did and still calls her Mama Africa, so she gets to end this party.
Katie Crouch is the New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks, Men and Dogs, and Abroad. She has also written essays for The New York Times, Glamour, The Guardian, Slate, Salon, and Tin House. Her newest novel is EMBASSY WIFE. A former resident of Namibia and San Francisco, Crouch now lives in Vermont with her family and teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.
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