“Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward

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REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things; it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants…But since Mama got sick, I learned pain can do that, too. Can eat a person until there’s nothing but bone and skin and a thin layer of blood left.”

Jesmyn Ward’s novel is a gritty, soul-wrenching account of poverty and blackness in the South. Set in rural Mississippi, Jojo is a teenaged boy growing up with his black mother, whom he calls Leonie, his grandmother Mam, his grandfather Pop, and his toddler sister Kayla. His white father is incarcerated, and he bears the responsibility of raising his little sister, as Leonie lacks the mothering instinct and Mam is bedridden due to a years-long battle with cancer. Pop teaches Jojo to work the land, to respect the animals, how to mercifully slit the throat of a goat and soothe a crying baby. Pop communicates with Jojo through stories of his time at Parchman prison, how he has learned to adapt and listen to the environment, to survive at all costs. Jojo’s caring and protective nature seems to be the only thing holding the family together.

Leonie battles addiction, both to the drugs which bring about hallucinations of her murdered little brother, and to Michael, her children’s father. She seems hell bent on chasing things in life that inevitably make her life harder, as if she knows no other way, as if she doesn’t deserve anything better. She doesn’t know how to love her children, and she punishes them for her inability to be the mother she feels she should be. Romantic love and getting high are her only escapes from the reality she has inherited.

The book shifts narrators with each chapter, Jojo and Leonie, and eventually Richie, the ghost of a little boy who spent time with Pop during his time at Parchman. What happened to Richie is the mystery, and the ghost won’t rest until Pop finishes the story that he only tells in pieces. The story unfolds in fragmented sentences, rich with descriptive details of nature that parallel the characters’ emotions. The heat is unrelenting, much like the presence of poverty. The rain is akin to the frequent bursts of emotion from people who feel too much and can’t escape pain. I winced many times reading this book, as some of the scenes are soul-crushing. Ward seems intent on making readers feel poverty and oppression, and she refuses to litter her narrative with reprieves from the crushing weight. This is not a pleasant read, nor is it meant to be. It is a vivid account of the burdens in life that some are never allowed to escape.

Jesmyn Ward has received The National Book Award for Fiction twice, first for Salvage the Bones, and again for Sing, Unburied, Sing. She is also an associate professor of English at Tulane University.