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September 7, 2021
Anne Liu Kellor's Playlist for Her Memoir "Heart Radical"
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.
Anne Liu Kellor's Heart Radical is a moving memoir about the power of language.
Foreword Reviews wrote of the book:
"Anne Liu Kellor's intimate and revealing memoir Heart Radical concerns a struggle to know oneself--and to get into the heart of the Chinese people through language."
In her own words, here is Anne Liu Kellor's Book Notes music playlist for her memoir Heart Radical:
“Amazing Grace” by Ani Difranco
I once was lost but now I’m found…
My roommate and best friend in college in Olympia introduced me to Ani. We had all of her CDs and listened to her on repeat. My heart was just opening to the Universe, to God, to the idea and felt sense of how connected I was to everything, to the Great Mystery, to the Vastness of the world and life. Ani connected this spiritual awakening in me with a simultaneous feminist awakening, even if I couldn’t name that then. I learned to wear grungy, baggy clothes, to shun the male gaze. I stopped wearing contacts, reverted to glasses. I spent most days alone, writing, getting high, walking in the woods, singing to myself. I wanted more friends and a partner, but more than this I wanted a soulmate, and since I knew these were hard to come by, I resigned myself to my aloneness, for now.
“On & On” by Erykah Badu
Most intellects do not believe in God but the fear is just the same…
I didn’t grow up with religion, so I was not allergic to the word God like many can be. I didn’t have to deconstruct one worldview before I could construct another. If anything, I had to deconstruct atheism, but even atheism wasn’t drilled in by my family—it was more like an absence of any talk of spirituality or belief systems. It was more like a void. Now, listening to Ms. Badu as I walked the muggy streets of this continent of Asia I felt rooted in an earthy sensuality, in a reminder of my womanliness, of my Americanness, of my ability to own my want and love and power with attitude, even if that attitude was mostly internal. For now.
“Ground On Down” by Ben Harper
I have faith in a few things, in divinity and grace…
When I went on the peace march for Tibet, we attended a Ben Harper concert in Seattle, and Ben invited us to come backstage. Ani-la, the Tibetan nun with us, presented him with a Tibetan flag. He gave us a few hundred dollars for our cause, apologizing that it wasn’t much. When we shook hands, he asked me, “Do I know you?” I shook my head, shy, but thrilled. What does it mean when someone thinks they’ve seen you before? Is it sometimes a recognition of the eyes, a glint, a nod towards mutual witnessing? Hello, fellow human being on the Path. Later, when I let two Tibetan monks listen to my mixtape on a long bus ride in China, they were perplexed by Ben Harper’s crooning and electric guitar. It was unfamiliar to them, this rock n’ roll. This kind of music that could ignite in me a place in between my politics and my faith.
“Karmacoma” by Massive Attack
Now take a walk, take a rest… taste the rest…
I loved how you could buy pirated tapes and CDs in China. They were so cheap that I could afford to buy ten or more at once, try out musicians I’d never heard of or was curious about. Massive Attack was one of those, my gateway drug to trip hop. They will forever remind me of walking around Hong Kong with my headphones on, watching humanity stream by, a rush of people, movement, flow, and me finding my own flow in between the bodies, Chinese, British, Easterners, Westerners, international, riding a wave, silently observing, invisible, visible, racially ambiguous, gliding past, young, single, nameless, free.
“Nothing to Lose (Yi Wu Suo You)” by Cui Jian
Do I really have nothing…
My boyfriend in China introduced me to Cui Jian, the godfather of Chinese rock n’ roll. Cui Jian was a voice for a whole generation, rising to popularity in the 80s at the height of China’s new opening, when it was becoming possible for artists to find each other and have a voice, to borrow from rock n’ roll and fuse and create their own social movement. This song was also the unofficial anthem from the Tiananmen square student protests. Cui Jian performed it there in 1989, days before the tanks would roll in and fire away, killing thousands of people. The lyrics speak of a woman scorning a man because he has nothing, but beneath the metaphor the song speaks to the disillusionment of the youth, the lack of freedom people felt and were finally beginning to publicly name.
“Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince
In this life you’re on your own. And if the elevator tries to break you down, go crazy…
I chose this quote for my high school senior yearbook. I wasn’t even the biggest Prince fan, but the choice has aged well. For I had no idea back then, in 1993, that a mere few years later I’d be quitting college and going to China for the first time, or how in 1999 I’d return to stay for three years. I had no idea how many times that elevator would try to break me down, how many times I’d end up quitting a job, leaving a relationship, or fleeing a town to escape. Leaving was my way of going crazy. And drinking and smoking and dancing. But despite my youthful flightiness, at least I already knew back then that life was too short to stay in a place where your heart does not belong.
“Numb” by Portishead
And it’s loneliness that just won’t leave me alone.
There was one time I had to flee a town because I kissed my best friend’s husband. I’d lived there for about six months, eating dinner with our tight group of Chinese and expat friends each night, feeling closer to having a community than I had my whole time in China, or maybe ever. And then I fucked it up. Granted, he pursued me. And I was hungry and flattered to be wanted and seen. But still. I made a choice. And then I had to leave. And after all this time, it’s her I miss. Someone who felt like a sister to me, someone who could have become a life-long friend.
“Hidden Place” by Bjork
We go to that hidden place…
Most of my time in China was spent in Chengdu, isolated away in my boyfriend’s apartment. Each day, he painted in one room, while I wrote in another. Afternoons we’d go out and run errands or sit in our favorite tucked-away teahouse to read and write and smoke. By early evening we’d return, squeezing past the chaos of the night market on our street, to hide away in our apartment again, watching pirated DVDs until early morning. I remember when we watched Bjork’s Dancer in the Dark, a musical like I’d never seen before, a musical about the death penalty, a musical that spoke to my red-bird depths of grief. I remember how achingly I cried from a deep, dark place. How her music, especially her next album Vespertine, woke something primal in me.
“You and Whose Army?” By Radiohead
Come, come on… you think you drive me crazy…
During my last months in Chengdu, my boyfriend and I used to go to one of our only friend’s apartments out in the suburbs and sit on the rooftop. From that place up high, you could look out and not see any other buildings. It was still a grey cement building, still polluted China, still a night sky devoid of stars, but at least while sitting at that table, I could taste what it might feel like to not be so confined. So boxed in on all sides by people and judgments, silences and stares. And by a relationship that I had outgrown, but not yet admitted was over. Amnesiac was the perfect soundtrack to my bubbling over angst. To coming to know and coming to leave China, or all the ways that China— and violence and silence— have long lived in me.
You forget so easily
We ride tonight
Ghost horses
Anne Liu Kellor is a multiracial Chinese American writer, teacher, editor, and creativity coach. Her essays have appeared in publications such as Longreads, Witness, The New England Review, Entropy, Normal School, Vela Magazine, and Fourth Genre. Her work has received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Seventh Wave, Jack Straw, 4Culture, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods. She lives in Seattle, where she facilitates private workshops for women and teaches writing for the Hugo House.
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