Sing, unburied, sing

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Jesmyn Ward: Sing, unburied, sing (2018)

367 pages

English language

Published April 4, 2018

ISBN:
978-1-4328-4652-7
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OCLC Number:
1002692592

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5 stars (2 reviews)

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm 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 across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.

7 editions

Lyrically Beautiful and Devastating

5 stars

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.

Long version: jdaymude.github.io/review/book-sing-unburied-sing/

Subjects

  • Large type books
  • African American families
  • Fiction

Places

  • Mississippi