{"id":6456,"date":"2018-03-14T11:54:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6456"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:54:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:54:07","slug":"sing-unburied-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/14\/sing-unburied-sing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sing, Unburied, Sing."},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesmyn Ward\u2019s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing<\/a><\/em> won the National Book Award for 2017, and is among the leading contenders for this year\u2019s Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It\u2019s very much in the long tradition of African-American literature that employs magical realism to tell a story that shows readers the weight of historical racism borne by today\u2019s African-Americans. It feels timely, and it does not shy away from any of the ugly truths of any such story, but it also felt too familiar, as Ward seems to cover ground that Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston covered a few decades ago.<\/p>\n

Ward unfurls the story through two narrators, with a third joining briefly in the heart of the book, who move together but offer different perspectives on the same events. JoJo is a precocious 13-year-old boy, living in the Deep South with his grandparents, Pappy and Mam, the latter of whom is dying of cancer. JoJo\u2019s mother, Leonie, is a drug addict and inconsistently in the house, so JoJo has learned to take care of himself and his toddler sister, Kayla, short for Michaela. Their father, Michael, starts the novel in prison, and the bulk of the story revolves around a disastrous trip the three of them take to meet Michael when he\u2019s released from prison, joined by Leonie\u2019s addict friend Misty. Leonie is black, and Michael is white, and his father is a good ol\u2019 boy racist who wants no part of his grandchildren. Leonie had a brother, Given, who was shot and killed by a white boy … who happened to be Michael\u2019s cousin. When Leonie gets high, she sees Given. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a second story, told by Pappy to JoJo in pieces over the course of the novel, relating to Pappy\u2019s time in the prison camp known as Parchman (now a regular prison, where Michael has been doing time). Pappy tried to take care of Richie, a young boy about JoJo\u2019s age who was sentenced to time in Parchman for stealing food to feed his many siblings, but it\u2019s clear from the start of the story that something went awry. When JoJo gets to Parchman, he sees Richie as a ghost just as Leonie sees Given, and getting to the bottom of the story becomes crucial to JoJo and to our own understanding of what Ward is trying to say in the book as a whole.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The way that past racism continues to exact a toll on subsequent generations suffuses Sing, Unburied, Sing<\/em>. JoJo, obviously aware of racism and mature beyond his years, feels like a great secret is being kept from him, while Kayla is too young to care, but has also come to see JoJo as a parent more than Leonie or the father she doesn\u2019t even know. Pappy has never recovered from what happened at Parchman; Mam has never recovered from losing Given. (In a nice touch of realism, the white boy who shot Given doesn\u2019t go to jail.) And Leonie wants to escape, physically and mentally, from just about everything other than Michael, but the superficial escape granted by drugs brings her visions of Given, a past she didn\u2019t ask to inherit.<\/p>\n

Ward\u2019s portraits of her core characters and even some of the side ones – Misty and the lawyer Al, at the least – are compelling and well-rounded, although all of the central figures are broken in some fashion. Michael is a bit of a cipher here, but also doesn\u2019t appear in much of the book. But the gimmick of the ghosts is a familiar trope in this genre, and Ward doesn\u2019t seem to say anything particularly new here, or to give readers a new angle on the subject. Yes, historical racism perpetuates the socioeconomic disadvantages most African-Americans face in our society. I don\u2019t think this book does enough to illuminate the problem or give anyone a window on how to address it. There is also way too much vomiting in this book. I\u2019m all puked out, thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesmyn Ward\u2019s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing won the National Book Award for 2017, and is among the leading contenders for this year\u2019s Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It\u2019s very much in the long tradition of African-American literature that employs magical realism to tell a story that shows readers the weight of historical racism borne by today\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,36,866,816],"class_list":["post-6456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-african-american-literature","tag-american-literature","tag-contemporary-literature","tag-national-book-award","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6457,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions\/6457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}