A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her …
A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out for Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the truths at the heart of the American story and the power and limitations of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.
This description comes from the 2017 Scribner edition.
This lyrically beautiful novel explores rural Mississippi, masterfully demonstrating how the present and all its struggles never seem far from the brutal past that created them. The questions that this novel leaves about what hope and healing look like in the rural South are pertinent ones, and their delivery is somehow both searing and soothing, holding our feet to the fire while knowing it is what we need most.
This was both hard to read and hard to put down. I think Ward does an incredible job at keeping the balance between heartbreaking and heart-filling, and she never crosses over to the point that I couldn't bear to witness the pain. These characters will stay with me a long time.
Monsters walk among us, and we humans really need to figure out what to do about them. (I don't know if that's Ward's message; it's just what hit me hardest in this book). I know it's not their fault -- know that they're just broken -- but they're monsters nonetheless and their actions inflict such tragic costs. Can't we all agree that it would be cheaper better healthier saner, more humane for everyone, to find ways to recognize and treat the problem?
This book really moved me. I felt rage, grief, wonder, admiration, love, and hope, strongly correlated with each distinct character, and I guess that sounds like they're onedimensional but they're not: they're human, deep, all of them, just each one feeding their inner wolves differently. Ward writes beautifully, and pulls off a neat trick: shifting first-person narration between three radically different main characters, each with a unique and …
Monsters walk among us, and we humans really need to figure out what to do about them. (I don't know if that's Ward's message; it's just what hit me hardest in this book). I know it's not their fault -- know that they're just broken -- but they're monsters nonetheless and their actions inflict such tragic costs. Can't we all agree that it would be cheaper better healthier saner, more humane for everyone, to find ways to recognize and treat the problem?
This book really moved me. I felt rage, grief, wonder, admiration, love, and hope, strongly correlated with each distinct character, and I guess that sounds like they're onedimensional but they're not: they're human, deep, all of them, just each one feeding their inner wolves differently. Ward writes beautifully, and pulls off a neat trick: shifting first-person narration between three radically different main characters, each with a unique and credible voice. This doesn't alter the reader's sympathies - I don't think Ward was trying for that - but it does add an extra dimension (no pun intended) to the reader's experience.
How I'd love to see a day when a book like this is incomprehensible to a reader.
I had put off reading this novel because I’d read some of Jesmyn Ward's essays, and I knew the novel would be one of those books that made me want to stop writing: what was the point when something as good as this already existed? As it turned out, I read the book on the heels of reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. About halfway through Sing, Unburied, Sing, I had a deja vu moment. The feelings Ward describes in the young character named Richie—imprisoned in Mississippi’s slavery-model prison known as Parchman and bent on escaping—could have been those Douglass describes when he decides to run north for his freedom. It puts the truth to one of the themes of the novel: things don't change. So many currents of our literary past flow through this book, and Ward digs new channels to make them her own. It's a …
I had put off reading this novel because I’d read some of Jesmyn Ward's essays, and I knew the novel would be one of those books that made me want to stop writing: what was the point when something as good as this already existed? As it turned out, I read the book on the heels of reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. About halfway through Sing, Unburied, Sing, I had a deja vu moment. The feelings Ward describes in the young character named Richie—imprisoned in Mississippi’s slavery-model prison known as Parchman and bent on escaping—could have been those Douglass describes when he decides to run north for his freedom. It puts the truth to one of the themes of the novel: things don't change. So many currents of our literary past flow through this book, and Ward digs new channels to make them her own. It's a difficult act—aware of it and using while creating something appropriately brand new—and Ward carries it off brilliantly. Which isn't to take anything away from the readability of the novel. It's wonderfully engrossing with characters I cared deeply about (even when I was judgmentally put out with them), again a real accomplishment given that so much of the novel takes place during a car trip (As I Lie Dying, anyone?). I guess what I most appreciate about the novel is that it takes the Mississippi literary mantel and wraps it around the shoulders of a Black female writer. It's about time.
Review of 'Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
Beautifully poetic and lyrical, sad and moving. Jesmyn Ward has the enviable talent of being able to create warped and flawed characters who you cannot help but want to follow and learn more about.
Beautifully poetic and lyrical, sad and moving. Jesmyn Ward has the enviable talent of being able to create warped and flawed characters who you cannot help but want to follow and learn more about.
Review of 'Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Admittedly, I suspected some kind of imitation Faulkner as I started to get into this, but this is a very fine thing. The supernatural is handled brilliantly and the novel builds and concludes like a bomb.
