Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

I previously read The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward, which included one of her essays. I have had Sing, Unburied, Sing on my list for years, but given the length of that list, well, it takes a while to get to stuff. 

 

I’ll say at the outset that this is not a pleasant or positive book. It is dark, full of generational trauma, Southern racial violence, and ghosts that won’t rest in peace. Also, domestic violence, drug use, child abuse, and police brutality. So, not light reading. 

 

It is fairly short, though, and moves fast, so it’s not an endless slog or anything. There wasn’t much humor to lighten things, either, so just expect that. It is an interesting look inside a complicated family dealing with the downstream effects of white supremacy - which hurts everyone, black and white. 

 

There are multiple perspectives in the book. The main narrative is told alternately by Jojo, the teen boy, and his mother Leonie. Later in the book, we get a third thread, told by Ritchie, the ghost of a young boy who Pop (JoJo’s grandfather) looked after when they were both in jail decades ago. 

 

There are other ghosts as well: Leonie’s younger brother Given, who was murdered by a white man jealous of Given’s archery skills. And, eventually, the ghost of Mam, JoJo’s grandmother, who dies near the end of the book. And a whole heck ton of other unnamed ghosts. 

 

And there are a handful of human characters. Pop and Mam, the most functional people in the book, the ones who are raising JoJo and his toddler sister Kayla. Leonie’s boyfriend - father to JoJo and Kayla - Michael, the white cousin of the man who killed Given. Michael’s viciously bigoted father, Big Joseph, and his mother who is trying not to be an asshole, and occasionally succeeding. Al, Michael’s lawyer and/or drug dealer. Misty, Leonie’s white coworker and friend, but also the one who got her into drugs. 

 

And everyone is complicated in this book, except possibly Big Joseph, who is the kind of pathetic old racist that we all have met at least once somewhere. Everyone else is a mix of good and bad. The good is predominant in Pop and Mam. And Kayla is just a kid. JoJo is at that awkward age of trying to become a man too soon. Michael and Leonie have serious demons that they can’t seem to shake. And no wonder with their traumas. 

 

The heart of the story is that Michael has been in prison for a few years (probably for drugs, but we never get the full story), and is now getting released. Leonie decides to go pick him up, taking Misty for moral support (her man - who is black - is also incarcerated, but not getting out yet), and dragging JoJo and Kayla against their will. 

 

There are lots of flashbacks and stories told by the characters to fill in gaps. Given’s life and death. How Pop got sent to jail for being in the wrong place. What happened with Ritchie. And a few others. 

 

I did find the story - stories really - interesting, and characters believable. Some of these situations were things that I grew up with in my neighborhood. We were the place kids would come crash when their parents didn’t come home due to a drug bender, or a bad fight between the parents. 

 

[Note: when I talk about how my parents have devolved, this is what I mean. They were really good people once, before Fox News and Bill Gothard and the rest of the white christian nationalist industrial complex ate them.] 

 

I didn’t note many lines in this book - it really is one more to just read and go with the flow. 

 

However, there is a quote from Eudora Welty on the cover page, and a line that really encapsulates the parts of the book involving JoJo. 

 

“The memory is a living thing - it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives - the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.”

~Eudora Welty 

 

Once you read the book, you realize how this idea forms the basis of the book, its very bones. 

 

The quote comes during a section JoJo narrates, as he has been listening to Pop tell his old stories and give his generally solid advice. This is part of a longer monologue by Pop, about his own coming of age. 

 

“Some days later, I understood what he was trying to say, that getting grown means learning how to work that current: learning when to hold fast, when to drop anchor, when to let it sweep you up. And it could be something simple as sex, or it could be something as complicated as falling in love, or it could be like going to jail with your brother, thinking you are going to protect him.”

 

For JoJo, he is in many ways torn between his loyalties. He ends up choosing to protect Kayla, to a significant degree at the cost of his relationship with his mother, Leonie. Which is sad, but feels inevitable. And so the cycle of trauma continues. 

 

It’s an interesting book, and worth a read.