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October 6, 2022
Rita Zoey Chin's Playlist for Her Novel "The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern"
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.
Rita Zoey Chin's novel The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern is as imaginative as it is inventive, and its empath protagonist is unforgettable.
Booklist wrote of the book:
"Chin (Let the Tornado Come, 2014) delivers an endearing protagonist whose epic quest ends with a measure of closure and wonder about the magic embedded in the unknown."
In her own words, here is Rita Zoey Chin's Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern:
I can’t imagine who I’d be without music. A time machine, a delicious wind, an endless invitation to dance, a portal, a homecoming, a thump and wail to mystery, music lives in me like a conversation between the universe and my soul. I also struggle to imagine who I’d be if I weren’t a writer, aside from maybe a singer (if I had any kind of singing voice, which I don’t). Naturally then, music often inspires and intersects with my writing. The following songs are a selection from the (very long) playlist of my first novel, The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern. Some of these songs appear in the book, and some of them I played on repeat while I was writing it.
Ekova, “Temoine” (Farmakit Extended Remix)
Two lines from this song, to which I’ve danced wildly around my house more times than what might appear sane, are quoted in my novel’s epigraph: “In this life, you’ve got to use all of your forces. In this life you’ve got to use all of your senses.” The lyrics in this song are conjuring, but aside from those two lines, most of the words are a language the artist invented. This shares something in common with fiction for me—that we can invent worlds that become real spaces to live in, that there are still new things to say. With its driving beat and Dierdre Dubois’s phenomenal vocal range, this song feels to me like an incantation, and that seemed like the perfect note on which to begin a book in which witches throw their voices up at the moon.
Jesca Hoop, “Free of the Feeling”
When I was writing the Moss Witches’ story, a legacy that Leah inherits through letters she has to travel all over the U.S. and Canada to retrieve, I often visited this song. It helped me envision these five women who traveled on the mapped path of a Fibonacci spiral over nine full moons, performing rituals as a way of connecting to their deepest creative impulses, the sparks that underlie all creation.
Agnes Obel, “Familiar”
Aw, man. The way Obel processes her voice in parts of this song absolutely haunts me. When I hear it, I can picture Leah on the road, miles and miles in the dark, the ghosts of her past and the mystery of her future swirling as mist in her headlights.
Led Zeppelin, “No Quarter”; Jethro Tull, “Aqualung”; Moody Blues, “Late Lament”
These are grouped together here because they appear as a group in my book: songs young Leah listened to when she played the records of the man who raised her. She connected to the darkness—“dogs of doom,” “broken luck,” “gathering gloom”—in these songs, as if the musicians understood the darkness she felt inside.
Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name”
My novel opens with a death ritual. Or at least, that what’s Leah thinks it is, though her plans are about to take a sudden detour when someone knocks on her door. During this ritual, she plays “Killing in the Name” and thrashes through her apartment, a torrent of righteous rage.
Blue Öyster Cult, “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”
Okay, I admit it. I still love this song, still get chills when the candles go out and the Reaper appears, “Saying ‘Don’t be afraid. C’mon, baby.’” I find it so damn romantic, and though Leah and I are very different, she, too, is attracted to this version of death.
Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams”
This song appears in the book as sung in the car by the road-tripping coven of five. Two of the women are in love, but that love is fraught and tangled, so the line, “Women, they will come and they will go,” has hooks here.
Donna Summer, “I Feel Love”
Staying a little longer with the Moss Witches, who practiced their magic in 1977, this is the song the two women I just mentioned dance to in a club in New York. It’s going to be a pivotal night for them, but not in the way either of them is hoping it will be. For a moment, though, we get it, in Donna Summer’s luscious voice: love.
Patti Smith, “Dancing Barefoot”
This song always puts me in the mood. Oh, I mean to write. What were you thinking?
Rita Zoey Chin is the author of the widely praised memoir, Let the Tornado Come. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and is the recipient of a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. She has taught at Towson University and at Grub Street in Boston. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Tin House, and Marie Claire. This is her first novel.
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