Chantel Acevedo’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Cages

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. Chantel Acevedo’s novel Cages is a moving and thoughtful book about forbidden love in a totalitarian society. Publishers Weekly wrote of the book: “This illuminating novel from Acevedo (The Distant Marvels) documents the tormented life of a gentle zookeeper in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Homosexuality is considered counterrevolutionary by Castro’s regime, and punishable by imprisonment or confinement in a psychiatric hospital. Felix, a zookeeper in Havana carrying on a secret love affair with his male coworker, Réne, grows anxious from these threats as well as the Cuban Missile Crisis… the author shows how the cages of the title are both literal and metaphorical, representing homophobia,…