Published by Scribner on 05 Sep 2017
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Jesmyn Ward brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi’s past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power—and limitations—of family bonds.
Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.
His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.
When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.
If you’re into magical realism and southern gothic, this is the book for you. Unfortunately those aren’t the genres for me, but I still gave this book a shot because of its important themes of racism, poverty, and drug addiction.
In the end, this felt like the kind of book I’d be assigned for English class. I identified a ton of literary devices, particularly flashbacks and metaphors, but I wasn't invested enough to further explore how those devices were probably supposed to enrich the characters. I felt like this story was living in the past, and I didn't perceive any character development. And this being a character-driven novel, I had no plot to fall back on to keep me immersed.
I'm trying to pinpoint why I wasn't invested in the characters. Perhaps I found the character voices incongruent with who I thought they were, given their thoughts and actions (chapters are written in different point-of-views).
However, this is a highly acclaimed novel, so I can't help but feel like I'm missing something. I don't think there was anything to miss in the plot, so perhaps my boredom from the lack of character development was an oversight of the character building/describing that other readers found so poignant.
I attribute my disconnect to this story to a mismatch of writing style and my personal taste, so if you're interested in this story from the blurb, and you're into magical realism and southern gothic, I highly recommend you giving this book a try, as my opinion is definitely in the minority!
