Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

The United States has been blessed with many outstanding writers from the South, particularly writers from the State of Mississippi. Among the most recent of these writers is Jesmyn Ward (b. 1977), the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant together with National Book Awards in 2011 and 2017. I enjoyed Ward's 2011 National Book Award winner "Salvage the Bones" and I enjoyed this 2017 book, "Sing, Unburied, Sing" even more. "Sing, Buried Sing" is beautifully written, poetic, with many characters and multiple layers of meaning from the gritty and realistic to the metaphysical. Without minimizing the disappointments of life and the long effect of slavery and racial discrimination in Mississippi, the novel shows great understanding of people and a sense of hope. It celebrates song, time, and place.Set in rural Mississippi on the Gulf and on a lengthy ride north to Mississippi's notorious Parchman Prison, the novel tells the story of a poor inter-racial family recounted in the first person by three alternating characters. The first narrator, Jojo, 13, is the son of Leonie, an African American woman and Michael, her long term boyfriend, white with racist parents. The second narrator is Leonie, 29. She and Michael have had two children, Jojo and Kayla, 3. Both Leonie and Michael are heavy drug users, and Michael has spent the three years before the novel begins at Parchman Prison for manufacturing and selling. Leonie loves but pays little attention to her children, with the burden of raising Kayla falling on Jojo. Leonie's parents are Pop, who did time at Parchman when young, and Mam, the "saltwater woman", dying of cancer and a healer who is able to communicate with the dead.The third narrator is a ghost, Richie, who did time at Parchman with Pop and who begins haunting Jojo as he accompanies Leonie and her white friend, Misty, to Parchman to bring Michael home from prison. Ghosts and spirits and the dead play a large role in the novel. In addition to Richie, the ghost of Leonie's beloved older brother, Given, who had been murdered 15 years earlier, appears to play a prominent role in the book. Spirits and ghosts appear in this novel when their lives have been troubled and have come to bad and premature ends. They wander and haunt others in search of closure and peace.The novel begins with a heavily gritty scene with Pop and Jojo slaughtering a goat to cook for Jojo's 13th birthday. Ward has a sharp eye for the details of rural Mississippi life. Much of the story involves the brutality of Parchman Prison, described in part through Michael's experiences but much more fully through the earlier experience of Pop. When he was committed to Parchman at 15 Pop, (whose name is River) befriended the 12-year old inmate Richie and tried to comfort him after a terrible whipping. Richie's ghost comes to Jojo because it wants to learn the fate that cost him his life and to be able to sing a song of peace and to rest. In addition to the terrors of Parchman, the history of racial relations in Mississippi plays a large role in part through Michael's father, big Joseph, an unrepentant and virulent racist. And the book has many graphic scenes of lynchings, burnings, and police with an itchy trigger finger. Drug use plays a large role in the book as well through Michael, Misty, Leonie, and several other characters. The religious, metaphysical aspects of the novel come to the forefront in Richie's story, and in Richie's poetic speech and in the story of the dying Mam, with her clairvoyance and with the haunting by Given.In part, this novel is a coming of age story for Jojo and a road novel, with the lengthy treatment of the drive to Parchman and back, but it is much more. The book is rooted in place and character. Ward loves the places she describes and the people, with all their difficulties. She develops the brutal aspects of her story, in terms of the racism from Mississippi's past in a way that comes out from her characters and their lives. The " ghosts" from the racist past and present come through without destroying the people, and the search for hope and a better life. A spirit of love, forgiveness and mystical religion underlie this book more than a sense of condemnation.Many parts of this story suggest the spiritual aspects of life, intertwined with some dreadfulness, particularly in the voice of Richie. The ghost observes, when he comes to haunt Jojo, of the difficulty of understanding the nature of time and evil particularly growing out of Richie's experience when alive at Parchman."I didn't understand time, either, when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman would pull me from the sky? How could I imagine Parchman would pull me to it and refuse to let go? And how could I conceive that Parchman was past, present, and future all at once? That the history and sentiment that carved the place out of the wilderness would show me that time is a vast ocean, and that everything is happening at once?"Then again, late in the novel Richie's ghost speaks of returning to his spiritual home at peace with himself at last and aware of the physical beauty and variety of the world and its people:"There are yurts and adobe dwellings and teepees and longhouses and villas. Some of the homes are clustered together in small villages, graceful gatherings of round, steady huts with doomed roofs. And there are cities, cities that harbor plazas and canals and buildings bearing minarets and hip and gable roofs and crouching beasts and massive skyscrapers that look as if they should collapse, so weirdly they flower into the sky. Yet they do not."Ward's story begins with roots in a particular place. expands to uncover the place's ghosts and tragic events, and expands still further and transcendentally to a vision of hope. Early in the novel, Pap passes on to Jojo a teaching from his own great-grandfather about the spirituality and unity of all life that Ward's entire novel works to expand: "there's spirit in everything. In the trees, in the moon, in the sun, in the animals, Said the sun is most important, gave it a name, Aba. But you need all of them, all of that spirit in everything to have balance. So the crops will grow, the animals breed and get fat for food." The book encourages careful reading and extensive reflection. "Sing, Unburied, Sing" is an extraordinary novel.Robin Friedman

My book club's March pick was Jesmyn Ward's novel, "Sing, Unburied, Sing", a 2017 National Book Award winner and the story of a mixed family living in Mississippi facing the realities and consequences of racism.Ward's novel tells the story from multiple points of view: Jojo, a racially mixed thirteen year old boy primarily raised by his grandparents; Leonie, Jojo's mother, a young black woman working and addicted to meth while her boyfriend and children's father is serving his sentence in the nearby prison of Parchman; and Richie, the ghost of a young, black boy who died while serving his own sentence in Parchman and knew Jojo's grandfather, Riv (River). Jojo's father, Michael, is set to be released, so Leonie takes Jojo, Michaela - Jojo's toddler sister, and her friend - Misty, on a short road trip to pick him up (Misty is visiting her own significant other in Parchman). Ward's novel is masterful at interweaving multiple archetypes: coming of age, confronting ghosts (literally!) of the past, caring for a dying parent and other complicated familial relationships, confronting racism in the heart of the South and the topical subject of police brutality against young black men. Ward certainly packed a lot into "Sing, Unburied, Sing".I enjoyed the rich detail of Ward's writing and the raw confrontation of social issues that have plagued this country since its foundation. Through the eyes of children, both of today and of the past, the harsh realities of racism and drug abuse are seen and I had difficulty reading certain moments even though I could anticipate what was to come. I would recommend "Sing, Unburied, Sing" to anyone interested in a meaningful contemporary novel depicting the American South and confronts its stereotypes.Happy Reading!

The last book I read by Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones, seared itself into my consciousness and humbled me with its brutal reality. I didn’t think Ms. Ward could soar to the heights she achieved in her debut, but she has. This is an incredible novel, packed with power, ferocity, and majesty. Often, I found myself reading phrases over and over again because of the sheer beauty of the prose.Interestingly, I sensed thematic similarities in this and my other favorite book of 2017 — Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Both integrate the presence of ghosts that are able to haunt us and heal us and who demand attention. But although there is a touch of magical realism in this book, it is grounded in a brutal reality.The focus is a broken family — Leonie, a failed black mother, her white-trash husband Michael whose cousin killed her brother Given and who is about to be released from jail himself, JoJo, her sensitive and paternal thirteen year old son, and the toddler, Michaela, who adores her older brother.There is pain here, lots of pain. Leonie’s father Pop was incarcerated in a brutal prison and there is an unfinished story here that still keeps his soul prisoner. Leonie and Michael need each other with a drug-fueled unhealthy desperation that obliterates their ability to care for their vulnerable kids. JoJo and Kayla cope with ravenous hunger – not only for food but for love – and horrific nausea. The torments of imprisonment, racism, black trauma, and innate hatred are weaved throughout the narrative.How can these ugly elements possess sheer beauty? I wondered that when I read Salvage the Bones and I wondered again here. I think it’s because the sheer lyrical power of an excellent writer weaving her craft reveals that art will always triumph over the evils of the world. Despite the book’s darkness, that message is inspirational.

Llegó antes de lo esperado y el libro es muy interesante

I enjoy an action-packed read and this was a little slower, but it was so well written that it overcame my personal preferences and I still had to rate it very highly.

Fantasmas de Toni Morrison e William Faulkner rondam o segundo e premiado romance de Jesmyn Ward, SING, UNBURIED, SING. Há também outros possíveis fantasmas, mas esses são personagens que transitam entre esse e outro mundo. Mas o maior fantasma que assombra não apenas a narrativa, mas também os Estados Unidos (e outros países), é o racismo. Em The underground railroad, Colson Whitehead diz: “A América é um fantasma na escuridão”. Essa poderia ser uma epígrafe para o romance de Ward.Escuridão também é uma imagem – ou ausência de imagem – evocada de tempos em tempos no livro. A escuridão que cega personagens incapazes de ver com lucidez as relações e amarras sociais que os unem e separam. Leonie e Michael formam um casal interracial unido não apenas pelo seu amor doentio, mas também pelo vício em metadona. Ele acaba de sair da prisão após participar do assassinado do irmão dela – um dos fantasmas do livro. O outro é Richie, um garoto que morreu na mesma prisão onde Michael cumpriu sua sentença.Parte da narrativa é filtrada pelo olhar de Jojo, 13 anos, filho mais velho do casal, criado pelos avós – agora, a avó está em seu leito de morte, vítima de um câncer -, e ele e sua irmã são retomados pelos pais. A outra narradora é Leonie, com sua visão intoxicada do mundo e dos laços de família. E, por fim, o último narrador é Richie, em sua fantasmagoria melancólica da vida que não vive.Ward conjuga essas vozes entre idas e vindas, criando um coro estilhaçado pelo preconceito racial, pela herança cultural e o peso de ser um/uma negro/negra nos Estados Unidos. Essa odisseia polifônica evoca o Faulkner de As I Lay Dying (Enquanto Agonizo), mas Ward, ao contrário do escritor, é mulher e negra, suas preocupações e ansiedades são outras, muito mais próximas da Beloved (Amada), de Toni Morrison – outro livro com um possível fantasma ao centro.Os fantasmas, aqui e nos outros livros, são mais do que presenças são assombrações metafísicas de problemas materiais, e a prosa de Ward evoca isso com força e poesia. Embora as três vozes não encontrem o mesmo peso e nem sempre sejam muito distintas – de longe, a de Jojo é a melhor e a mais interessante, assim como sua narrativa – todas têm algo a dizer sobre o estado das coisas. E também há quem cante – e quem canta são os milhares de negros escravizados, explorados, vilipendiados, mortos. Sua canção, em Sing, unburied, sing, é o rito funeral que tenta enterrar um passado em busca de um futuro mais justo, mas sem nunca esquecer o peso da história.

One of the best books I’ve read in a while. “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is about a black American family on the Gulf coast of Mississippi in a fictional town, and has one of the most endearing central child characters in 13-year-old Jojo I’ve come across. Jojo has to act the part of surrogate parent to his toddler sister, whom he defiantly calls “Kayla”, rather than Michaela - in strong recognition of his black roots and rejection of his white convict father Michael for whom she is named. Jojo shoulders the burden of protecting Kayla because his substance addict mother, Leonie, who had him when she was still a teenager herself, is hardly capable of providing care for them.Jojo teeters on the edge of childhood under the chief care of Pop (his grandpa), who is grappling with the ghosts of his past, while helplessly watching his wife, whom the kids call Mama, die of cancer. The narrative flits between Jojo and Leonie, as well as a real ghost, Richie, who haunts Jojo with some unfinished business that he wants help with. The first-person narrative provides the reader with some empathy for the incompetent mother Leonie even as she fumbles along and struggles with her role as wife, daughter and mother, facing rejection from her children and silent disappointment from her parents, while having to confront her hostile and racist in-laws who still think of her as dirt and responsible for leading their former football-star Son down the twisted path and to his downfall.Ward paints an engaging character in Jojo, and his close bond with Kayla (the latter given so much believable personality even though she is mostly pre-verbal) is lovingly detailed and the effect is both poignant and heartbreaking. At the heart of the novel is a road trip Leonie takes with her children to pick up Michael from prison that shows up all the problems of the relationship Leonie has with her resentful children, the situation not helped by her white junkie friend, Misty, who comes along to visit her boyfriend. Ward is adept at showing all the subtle and none-too-subtle signs of racial prejudice and discrimination, even between friends. She also manages to make strong connections between pre- and post-slavery America through Pop’s story that begs the question if things have really changed all that much.Ward’s fluid prose flows as smoothly as the water imagery that is constantly being conjured up so that it is with a feeling akin to being drowned by horror and sadness when Pop comes to the end of his narrative and the ending of the novel. An uncomfortable but yet a powerful book that demands to be read.

Ha ça faisait longtemps que je n’avais pas autant aimé un livre. C’est touchant, c’est beau, c’est simple, et ça change aussi beaucoup des histoires de racisme dans le sud des usa qu’on connait.. magnifique.