Sing, Unburied, Sing

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Average customer rating 5 (3 comments)

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"Sing, Unburied, Sing" really isn't like any other novel you've ever read. There are ghosts, drug-addicted women and imprisoned men. Racism, child neglect and superstition. Pieces of it will shock you with their violence and cruelty while other pages may make you gasp at their beauty. This is magical realism in modern-day Mississippi. This is a novel that brings the insanity of mass incarceration to painful life. This is a book that can rightfully consider itself a descendant of Toni Morrison's "Beloved" while also standing entirely alone, without peer.

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Another intense and gripping tale from Jesmyn Ward. I highly recommend this book! The story follows JoJo, a 13 year old biracial boy, growing up in Mississippi. Most of the narrative follows JoJo as he accompanies his black mother to pick up his white father, who is being released from prison after three years. Along for the ride are his little sister and his mother's friend. The story takes some twists and turns, but through it all, the author paints a picture of this family and the community they exist in that is enlightening and despairing all at the same time. Hang in with the bit of magical realism she throws in. A truly modern look at the state of one family in the South. While this book is certainly fiction, it feels so real.

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I had never read Ward’s work before, and now that I have I will follow her anywhere. Sing Unburied, Sing is a literary masterpiece, and one that fits the time in which we live. It opens up all sorts of thorny questions for examination, but like most thorns, it stings. I received my copy free and early courtesy of Scribner and Net Galley. Jojo and Kayla have been raised by their grandparents in rural Mississippi; Mam and Pop are their source of love and stability. Leonie, the mother they call by her first name as if she were a sister, drifts in and out, using copious amounts of meth and other drugs. Michael, the children’s Caucasian father, is being released from Parchman, the notorious prison where he has been sent after having killed Leonie’s brother, Given. Given comes to her when she’s high. She doesn’t know it, but Jojo and Kayla can see him, too.Leonie swoops in and after overcoming her mother’s resistance, takes the children and heads for Parchman to pick up her man. Leonie is not the swiftest deer in the forest, and then of course she’s high a lot of the time, and seems to have been solipsistic from the get-go; at one point in the story Mam tells Jojo that his mama just doesn’t have the mothering instinct.It’s the understatement of the century. On their odyssey they encounter racist cops, a Caucasian drug-dealing attorney, and a host of other beings, living and not. The narrative is told in the first person by Leonie and Jojo alternately, with a voice from Pop’s past peeking in once the adventure is underway. Although the characters are traveling physically through most of the story, it’s not about setting; it’s about character. We learn these characters so intimately that it’s almost as if we ride beneath their skins, and we also learn Pop’s terrible secret. Ward is a lion. This novel will be talked about for a long, long time.