Book Review: Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 book, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner) is an engrossing novel of a Mississippi family struggling with issues of race, unemployment and threatened family breakup. It is a difficult book to put down.

Set on the Gulf Coast and in the Mississippi Delta, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a story of thirteen-year-old Jojo, his grandfather Pop, grandmother Mam, mother Leonie and toddler sister Kayla. Jojo has a close relationship with Pop, whose years of experience have made him wise and patient. Pop teaches Jojo how to cope with the difficult things in life, and Jojo wants to show Pop that he can take life as an adult.

Mam lies in her room, in the last days of her battle with cancer. Key to the story, Jojo and Leonie are able to see and speak to spirits of the dead who have not yet left this world. They inherited this ability, or burden, through Mam, who is able to use natural forces, herbals and words to help people.

On the surface, this is a story of the release of Leonie’s husband (Michael, Jojo and Kayla’s father) from Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s notorious high-security and historically black prison, after serving time on drug charges. Leonie is black and Michael is white. Michael’s father is a man who cannot see past race and he hates Leonie because of it; it is another family torn apart.

Leonie demands Jojo and Kayla join her on the trip to Parchman to pick up Michael, over Pop’s objections. It turns out Pop is right. Leonie is a neglectful mother, to the point of child endangerment. Leonie’s self-absorption and Michael’s absence force Jojo to be the parent to his little sister Kayla. The role of parent matures Jojo, but his maturity is also driven by the need of the dead to use his voice.

The spirits with whom Jojo and Leonie communicate are those of people who have suffered a deep wrong or have left something unresolved in life, and must stay in this world until these issues are answered. Leonie’s brother, Given, is one of those spirits, but Leonie can only see Given while she is using drugs.

Killed by Michael’s cousin, and the racially-charged murder thinly covered up as a hunting accident, Given cannot move on to the next world because he has been silenced, and his story remains untold and unresolved. The lack of a voice is both figurative and literal; spirit Given cannot speak aloud.

Another ghost appears to Jojo later in the book, when the group arrives at Parchman Farm. This is the spirit of a twelve-year-old African American boy, Richie, who was imprisoned at Parchman for a minor offense, at the same time Pop was serving a sentence there. Richie is young and naïve; he does not understand the forces at play in the prison, and Pop tries to protect him. But Richie is killed while serving his time.

On the ride back to the Gulf Coast after Parchman, Richie’s spirit haunts, gnaws at, weighs on Jojo, and constantly seeks something from the living boy. He demands Jojo ask: Why did your grandfather not protect me in prison? What happened to me? The spirits cannot speak, so they require that the living ask the questions.

And that’s the title of the book. Ward has her characters speak for the silenced and forgotten. In an interview on National Public Radio in August 2017, Ward referred to those killed at Parchman and elsewhere: “I thought about all those people whose suffering had been erased, and thought, ‘Why can’t they speak? Why can’t I undo some of that erasure?’” In Sing, Unburied, Sing, the living must provide a voice for the dead to ask the questions that most of the living do not want to answer. In the title, Unburied means that these questions are still unsettled and will not allow these spirits to rest.

Ward uses a multiple narrative technique: the perspective of each chapter is rotated among the different characters. This is a difficult technique, but Ward makes it work well. A very different Mississippi writer, William Faulkner, used this technique in his classic novel, As I Lay Dying. In that book, the Bundren family treks across the state to bury the mother of the family. Faulkner also has each of his characters takes a turn narrating a chapter, including the spirit of the deceased mother. But in Sing, Unburied, Sing, the multiple narrative effectively makes the family a living being itself, with a voice and a desire to survive.

Other recurring themes in Sing, Unburied, Sing include blood and water. Pop’s given name is River and Mam is called the saltwater woman. On the drive to Parchman Farm, Leonie buys drinks for herself and her girlfriend, but leaves the children thirsty. “Sometimes I wonder who that parched man was, that man dying for water, that they named the town and jail after,” Jojo says.

In this book, water is a symbol for life, love and nurturing. Leonie is not a nurturing mother; instead, she is neglectful and her children go thirsty. But Pop and Mam have always looked out for their grandchildren.

Blood is sometimes used to represent both family and maturity. As the book opens, Jojo narrates a scene in which he helps Pop slaughter a goat.

I follow Pop out the house, try to keep my back straight, my shoulders even as a hanger; that’s how Pop walks. I try to look like this is normal and boring so Pop will think I’ve earned these thirteen years, so Pop will know I’m ready to pull what needs to be pulled, separate innards from muscle, organs from cavities. I want Pop to know I can get bloody. Today’s my birthday.

Jesmyn Ward knows well the part of the country in which the events of Sing, Unburied, Sing occur; she was born in DeLisle, Mississippi, not far from the Gulf Coast, and resides there now. She is an associate professor of creative writing  at Tulane University. Other books from her include novels Salvage the Bones (2012, Bloomsbury) and Where the Line Bleeds (2018, Scribner), and essay collection The Fire This Time (2016, Scribner). She is a two-time National Book Award winner.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is an important and thought-provoking book that deserves reading.

Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
Scribner
$26.00
ISBN 978-1501126062
Published September 5, 2017
304 pp.

Book image: Scribners