Jesmyn Ward is a poet who writes novels. The lyricism of her prose starkly contrasts the gritty realism of her plots, but that is part of the joy of reading her. Her novels hold a gilded mirror to life’s imperfections. Her characters live in a world where murder can be termed as a “hunting accident” so long as the victim is black; a world where the police won’t hesitate to pull a gun on a frightened thirteen-year-old boy with a toddler on his back; a world where young women can’t afford the health services their budding bodies need; a world where a white father would disown his son for falling in love with a black girl; a world where children have to steal food if they want to eat; a world where getting high is easier than facing the truth.
Ward is no stranger to drawing from mythology. Her previous novel, Salvage the Bones, is built upon the myth of Medea and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she draws inspiration from The Odyssey (“5 Qsuestions”). Nonetheless, it is not mythic, but
At its core, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a bildungsroman. The novel’s protagonist is Jojo, a thirteen-year-old boy on the cusp of manhood. The primary narrator of Ward’s novel, Jojo is raised primarily by his mystical grandmother and stoic grandfather. The novel opens with the graphic slaughtering of a goat, intensified by Jojo’s preternatural ability to feel what animals are thinking. This is his birthday, and he wants to prove to his grandfather that he’s “old enough to look at death like a man” (Ward 5). He fails on this day, but as the book progresses into a road novel and Jojo’s experiences with violence and dying compound, we watch him transform into a man.
Jojo’s journey to manhood is a treacherous one. He fights against tremendous odds for something as simple as the right to survive. Starving for familial connection, Jojo draws as much love, nurture and protection from his grandparents as he can. At the same time, however, he is forced to provide the same for his younger sister, Kayla. In this way, Jojo finds himself stepping in as a mother as he simultaneously works towards becoming a man.
The second narrator of Sing, Unburied, Sing is Leonie, Jojo’s drug-addicted mother. Haunted by the murder of her older brother—whose ghost she sees when she’s high—and tormented by the image of her mother withering away in bed, Leonie is a “walking wound,” constantly seeking the balm of forgetfulness (Ward 54). Drawn into an obsessive and volatile relationship with the cousin of her brother’s murderer, Leonie’s very understanding of love seems to be warped by circumstance. When her husband, Michael, gets out of prison, she forces their children on a road trip to the prison, which finds itself interrupted by sickness, hunger, and sordid drug deals.
The journey back home is haunted by Ward’s third narrator, Richie. The ghost of a young boy who follows the family back home, Richie was sent to Parchment Prison a generation earlier for stealing food to feed his siblings. The victim of a mysterious murder, Richie wants to find Jojo’s grandfather, the only father he ever knew, in order to discover the dark truth behinds his demise. Just a little boy, “hungry for love. Pulling all the weight of history behind him,” Richie is a reminder of the not so distant past (Ward 265). One of many ghosts hungering for the love, nurture, and answers denied to them, Richie is a reminder of the havoc racism reaps. Like Leonie, Richie is a product of the idea that “sometimes the world don’t give you what you need, no matter how hard you look. Sometimes it withholds” (104). This is true for Richie, who was sent to and killed in prison at twelve years old. It’s true for Leonie’s brother Given, who was murdered at seventeen for daring to beat a white man in a hunting competition. It’s true for Jojo, whose white grandfather refuses to acknowledge his existence. It’s true for his younger sister Kayla, who may never have the chance to experience a mother’s love.
Ward’s portrait of coming-of-age in the South is inspired by her own youth in Mississippi. Set in the Faulkneresque Bois Savage, Sing, Unburied, Sing returns to the setting of Ward’s earlier novel, Salvage the Bones. A fictitious rural community off the Gulf coast, Bois Savage is modeled after Ward’s own recollections of life in Mississippi. With “the highest poverty rate in the country and one of the highest unemployment rates” Mississippi “is often ranked among the hungriest, unhealthiest and worst-educated places to live” (Begley). This is the undercurrent of Ward’s portrayal of life in the South. As a black author writing black characters, Ward’s work cannot avoid exploring contemporary racial issues. She admits, “I’m always thinking about race, the legacy of the South, and the ways that black people survive when I’m thinking about an idea for a novel; those are the concepts that animate all of my work.” (“5 questions”) As such, a history of racial violence and the intertwined reality of poverty and hunger course deeply throughout the pages of novels.
Bursting with mysticism, myth, and history, Sing, Unburied, Sing is another must-read for this generation. A recipient of the National Book Award, Jesmyn Ward’s novel is a dazzling journey into the supernatural realms of lyrical realism and a stunningly lyrical portrayal of life in the poverty-stricken veins of the American South.
As always, let me know what you think of the novel once you read it. You can leave me a comment here, on Instagram, or on Twitter. Jesmyn Ward is definitely one of my favorite contemporary authors. I’d love to know what you think of Jesmyn Ward’s work.
Begley, Sarah. “Jesmyn Ward, Heir to Faulkner, on ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing.’” Time, 24 Aug. 2017.
“5 Questions with Award-Winning Novelist Jesmyn Ward.” The Aspen Institute, 29 Jan. 2018.
Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, Unburied, Sing. Scribner, 2017.
