Sing: A Novel, Unburied, Sing

I knew from the first sentence that this book was going to make me feel. What I didn't know, but I knew it would be deep. I was right. This is a book for those who demand excellent writing and are not afraid to face the ups and downs of life.

For stories of the South, I much prefer Mark Twain or William Faulkner... their lives are so tragic that I can only look at it through the prism of humor... Jesmyn Ward made me feel like she was sharing the ugly, and she is right ... life can be quite ugly... why dwell on it?

Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing is worthy of all the critical praise it has received. A story unfolds with a balance of breathtakingly beautiful prose and poetry. No spoilers from me. An unforgettable and significant piece of literature.

A gently written novel, characterizing modern timelessness, the Deep South, poverty, neglect, drug use, this could be the modern day Grapes of Wrath. It may be used as literature in the future, a great find!

The prose in this novel is just as lyrically beautiful as Jesmyn Ward's earlier Salvage the Bones, but the story is more magical realist than southern gothic, and I feel like it suffers for it. The portrait of a Mississippi family dealing with racism, poverty, incarceration, and drug addiction is well-drawn, but it's hard to take any of it seriously when there are two different ghosts that keep popping up (one of whom even gets to narrate a substantial portion of the story). That's not just a literary device; these figures are actual spirits that the otherwise-realistic characters can see, and they detract significantly from every scene where they appear. Ward's considerable talents still shine through, but this could have been a much stronger story if she had found some less literal way to show how her characters are haunted by the past.

I was very excited to start reading this nook. Ward does an amazing job of developing the characters and taking us through their journey. The only reason it is not a homerun for me is because Naomi has no redeeming quality, particularly in the end. I understamd that she just didn't have the mothering instinct. If so, why drag them around witn her. She's just a sad soul. Other than that, awesome read!

Female author...check. Black author...check. Poor black characters...check. Drugs and jail themes...check. Literary aspirations/credentials...check. Hence, rave mainstream reviews from the culture police and a National Book Award for a work that can only be scored a near total failure when judged by creativity, plot, complexity, intellectual depth, reader engagement, rendering of the human condition, quality of the writing, and insight. Three pages in I thought, yes, this is going to be good, and then it wasn't. Not at all. There are about six uninteresting characters, the thinnest plot imaginable, and ghosts, the latter apparently a new cool thing in literary realism. I cannot recommend this book. The stars are for aspirations.

Would have given the book a 2 1/2 if the rating system would have let me. I struggled to finish the book, but paying $14 or $15 I made myself. I should have stopped while I was ahead.. the ending was ridiculous.

Although this book is a page turner in many ways I found it to be somewhat dark and disturbing. I am never a fan when children are not properly cared for or carry unnecessary burdens but I still read it to the end

The horrible truth about race unfairness. Will we ever learn to respect each other?
At first I had trouble with the charter that physically wasn’t there.
Read the book a month or more ago and still think about the story.

I have read many National Book Award winners and honor books in literary fiction. After reading Jesmyn Ward’s previous winner, Salvage the Bones, I expected a good read, but was very disappointed in this one. The overall theme of the book is good, but the disjointed nature of the story was a huge turn off for me. The one component of the book that I wish had been left out was bringing into the story the ghost of a long dead 12 year old inmate of Parchman. In my opinion, his story while he was alive was important, but the ghost part was unnecessary. I am puzzled by so many glowing reviews of this book. If you read other National Book Award winners, you’ll understand why I can only gives this book a 2. At this point, I don’t think I can finish it.

2.5 STARS

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Scribner Books for providing me with a complimentary paperback copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Sing, Unburied, Sing deals with several serious issues such as poverty, bigotry, drug abuse and loss within a dysfunctional family in Mississippi. One would think I'd be pulled into a story that dealt with such emotionally charged subjects and yet I struggled throughout the book to connect with the plot and characters.

There are several things that just didn't work for me. First, the tone of the book was very monotone with a consistently depressing feel throughout. While the writing could be quite beautiful at times but the addition of the ghosts (who even had their own chapters) felt distracting and made the flow of the plot confusing.

The live characters didn't fare better. With the exception of Jojo (and his wonderful bond with his toddler sister, Kayla) the characters were one-dimensional. But I stayed with the book in the hopes that things would come together.

My biggest issue with the book is the persistent niggling feeling like I was missing something - some bigger meaning, especially pertaining to the ghosts. It was like I was just on the cusp of getting the author's point and that is a frustrating feeling to have.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn't a good fit for me. Other people have waxed poetic about this book and the emotions they felt while reading it and that's wonderful but I didn't have the same experience. This is a haunting, depressing look at a family that is almost completely fractured and, at times, had me incensed at how these children were being treated by their parents. Unfortunately, that was the only emotion that this book invoked within me.

This is a horrible book regardless of the author's prestige. I couldn't finish it because of the extended drive in a car with a young child, who is sick hanging on to her 13 year old brother for most of the journey.

“The song. The place is the song and I’m going to be part of the song.”

These words are uttered by a ghost, and certain members of a fractured family see the dead that are unburied, because they are not finished shadowing this family. Today Jojo turns thirteen, and his grandfather, Pop, is initiating lessons in adulthood. Jojo assists Pop in slaughtering and preparing a goat for the table. In Ward’s earthy and yet ethereal language, the slaughter becomes poetry, and the act is riveting. This is a family who has known death early, and is on the brink of awaiting another—Pop’s wife, Mam, once a robust midwife and shaman of herbs, who is dying of cancer…”the chemo done dried her up and hollowed her out the way the sun and the air do water oaks.”

The story opens with intensity and remains like a sad ballad throughout, with moments of light and redemption mixed with the thick slap of the Mississippi mud on the Gulf. It takes us to Parchman, the state penitentiary, on a road trip that compelled me with its mournful narrative. Jojo’s mother is Leonie, an unreliable drug addict who is away often, an unsteady but burning force in his life and that of his toddler sister, Kayla. Pop is the steady force, and Jojo is Kayla’s protective brother.

Leonie is going to pull Jojo from school for a few days to go to the prison and pick up her husband, Jojo and Kayla’s father, Michael. He’s been in Parchman several years, a lean and many tattooed Caucasian man whose brother hatefully killed Leonie’s brother, Given. Jojo’s memories of his father are largely physical fights with his mother, leaving bruises on both his parents. Pop won’t go near Parchman prison due to his own bad memories of being there for “harboring a fugitive” when he was a young man. He carries a psychic, emotional torture for the death of a cellmate, a twelve-year-old prisoner he feels he failed to fully protect.

Ward’s searing story is told through its corporeal and mystical language—elements of earth, fire, water, and sky; and animal, vegetable, and mineral allusions that I felt like iced heat in my bones and a violent river in my blood. At times, it is also so sensual that I wanted to cry and sing simultaneously. Ward sings a profound and painful love song to the bonds of a family crushed by grief, but with a glimmer of hope for the youngest generation. It is a must read for lovers of Jesmyn Ward and classic American literature. I thought of Beloved for its musicality and Grapes of Wrath for its archetypal and biblical characters. But Jesmyn Ward also sings her own aria of life, death, and the purgatorial unburied. Shattering and memorable.

Written in a way which makes it difficult for me to retain interest. Successfully conveys a child's distress. I found the subject matter depressing and put the book down after a few pages but for
those willing to pursue, may be quite worthwhile.

It took some time to suss out what I wanted to say about Jesmyn Ward’s new novel. Theoretically I could write that I loved it and call it a day, but SING, UNBURIED, SING is so much more than the sum of its parts that it would be a disservice to the book, to Ward and to readers to heap generic praise. This is the kind of novel that elicits unexpected emotion, far beyond those that automatically accompany scenes of brutality, conscious child neglect and inescapable poverty. It’s a road novel and a perch on a suffering rural America, a family drama and a ghost story set on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in a modern day that feels akin to the pre-Civil Rights South.

“I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that it’s something I could look at straight,” read the opening lines of SING, UNBURIED, SING, spoken by Jojo, one of three narrators. Jojo lives with his grandparents, his three-year-old sister Kayla, and his drug-addicted mother Leonie. Though he’s only 13, Jojo knows great responsibility in his household. Mam, his grandmother, is rapidly succumbing to a ravenous cancer. Pop works the small farm on which they live, and Leonie tends bar and gets high, rarely caring for or about her children. Kayla’s well-being falls to her brother, and it’s a responsibility he takes extremely seriously. Jojo and Kayla’s father, Michael, is imprisoned at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, where he’s been since Kayla was in utero.

Jojo has a tenuous relationship with Leonie. He doesn’t trust her nor does he seem to particularly care for her, often reciprocating the feelings she shows her son. Leonie, for her part, struggles to keep her own life together. A poor black woman with two kids whose father is in prison and a high school education, she has very limited options to care for her family. She tends bar and suffers the racism of the Deep South. She snorts coke with her friend Misty, partly for a reprieve and partly to see Given, her brother who died in a “hunting accident” at the hands of Michael’s cousin, a murder that was covered up by his father. Michael is white, and his parents want nothing to do with Leonie or their black grandchildren.

When Leonie gets the call that Michael is being released from prison, she decides to load the kids in her car and drive north across the state to pick him up at the prison gates. The kids don’t want to go. Leonie cares little for their well-being but is determined that her family be together for Michael’s release. They pack the car and begin what is bound to be a catastrophe of a road trip. Somewhere between picking up a load of drugs, Kayla’s consistent vomiting and a treacherous stop by police, the ghost of a boy not much older than Jojo finds his way into the car. Jojo and Kayla can see him, Leonie can’t, and he insists on going back with them to the coast. He needs to see Pop; he must know the end to the story that Pop has been slowly relating to Jojo about his own time in Parchman.

Each character in SING, UNBURIED, SING is complexly layered and developed. Ward’s prose manipulates the story in the way beautiful writing should, though at times it’s a bit overdone. The last hundred pages are absolutely brilliant. Lore and love, the necessity of truth uttered aloud and peace in death all converge in a chaotic and exquisite ending so deftly rendered that any previous missteps are forgiven.

Reviewed by Sarah Jackman

I kept trying to hang on to this book bc it has so many accolades, but I find life hard enough as it is. My reading time is sacred and I don't get enough of it. Before beginning "Sing" I knew it wd be demanding, but not gut-wrenching repulsive and keeping me up at night.

More power to you who read it entirely. I don't feel the need to be noble anymore by reading such traumatic, horrible books. Life, particularly under Trump, is hard enough. I need encouragement to keep investing and giving to the common good.

“Sing Unburied Sing ” is a brilliantly evocative novel about race, family, love and addiction, with a touch of magic realism and spiritualism.

Thirteen year old Jojo and his sister, Kayla, live with their mother, Leonie, their Father, Michael and their grandparents, Pop and Mam. Jojo (Joseph) and Kayla (Michaela) have never met their paternal grandparents, even though they live in close proximity. Grandfather Joseph will not accept them.

We first meet Jojo on his birthday, when Pap takes him out to slaughter a goat and Jojo becomes physically ill from the experience. Jojo’s mother, whom he calls Leonie, returns from a drug riddled outing with a pathetic little cake made for a baby shower and very little else. Jojo’s father, whom he calls Michael, calls from prison to say he is being released in a week (but notably not to wish happy birthday to his son).

Early in the novel, Pap explains to Jojo that “there’s spirit in everything. In the trees, in the moon, in the sun, in the animals…But you need all of them, all of that spirit in everything, to have balance.” Jojo and Leonie have a sense of spirituality. Jojo has the ability to understand the animals and the spiritual quality to see and converse with ghosts. Leonie can see and converse with her dead brother, Given, but only when she is high (which is a lot of the time). Mam can heal with herbs and plants based solely on her sense of what works. However, unfortunately, during the course of the book Mam is dying of cancer and even her skill cannot save her.

After Jojo’s lackluster birthday, much of the balance of the book is the trip that Leonie, Jojo, Kayla and Leonie’s friend, Misty take to pick up Michael from prison and to return home. Michael is incarcerated at Parchman, coincidentally enough the same prison where Pap was imprisoned years earlier simply for being his brother’s brother. In those days Parchman was especially brutal and the best days consisted of physical labor. While in Parchman, Pap met a boy even younger than he by the name of Richie. Richie suffered more than most while in Parchman.

The story moves back and forth between the trip to and from Parchman, Pap’s experience in Parchman and recollections of Richie, and Jojo’s experiences. The story is told in part by Leonie, in part by Jojo, with interludes from Richie.

Throughout the lengthy drive to Parchman, we get a good sense of the relationship between Leonie and her children. Leonie’s parental emotions and behaviors are complex, moving from love to hatred to violence to jealousy. Jojo appears to be more of a parent to Kayla than Leonie or Michael. Leonie and Misty spend a great deal of time high, yet Leonie’s attitude toward the people they encounter on the trip is one of superiority, suspicion and disdain. After Michael is released, they go to his parent’s house to introduce his parents to their grandchildren but the introduction does not go well.

The characters in this novel are complex. It is a story of intense emotion and conflict, both internal and external. Ward does an excellent job of evoking all of these emotions without telling you how to feel. This is the second good novel I have read in 2017 and you should read it too!

Although an initial look at the blurb for this would make you think it's a dark and depressing tale of life on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, it's so much more. The paranormal aspects of the novel- when the ghosts talk to poor Jojo- are the best part because they impart so much wisdom, even it might not seem so on the surface. All of these characters are sympathetic, even Jojo's lost mother, because you might recognize them, even across the boundaries of race and class. Ward has a lovely style of writing which is both literary and accessible. I believe this will be a wonderful book club selection and I'd recommend it to everyone, both young and old. Younger readers may focus on Jojo, older on Pop and Mam, and Leonie. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. This is a special book.

Like Ward's amazing novel, 'Salvage the Bones', this book explores the dynamics of a black family residing in rural Mississippi. Thirteen year old Jojo and his toddler sister Kayla live with their maternal grandparents, Mam and Pop. Mam is bedridden with end-stage cancer. Pop is their primary caretaker and in virtually every way, Jojo is a parental child. As Pop tries to show Jojo how to be a man, Jojo provides tender, loving care to Kayla and it is to Jojo she turns to for emotional nurturing. Their mother, Leonie, is a drug addict and has abdicated almost all responsibility for her children. However, when Michael, the children's white father, is released from Parchman Prison, Leonie, along with her friend Misty, pack the children up in Leonie's car to pick up Michael.

This novel, like 'Salvage the Bones' is multi-faceted and can be viewed on many levels. On the surface it is the story of a family, its history and the dynamics that push and pull them in many directions. It is an intimate and frightening account of addiction and the horrors that hang on to its coat tails. Racism raises its ugly head as the reader learns of the hatred that the paternal grandfather harbors for his dark skinned grandchildren and their mother. Essential to the story are loss and grief. How do we cope with loss and what is the nature of death? There are elements of spirituality and mysticism that each character perceives uniquely.

Jesmyn Ward has a gift that is rare and important. Her writing sings. Her narrative is midway between poetry and the blues. It is historical yet contemporary. It is universal.

This is the second Jesmyn Ward novel I've read (the other being Salvage the Bones), and I'm beginning to wonder why I do this to myself.

Ward's characters suffer. They are almost always impoverished to the point where it is painful to read about. There are moments of heartbreak so profound (especially in chapters narrated by children) that you find yourself suffering along with them, wishing there was something you could do.

This novel added a touch of magical realism with some of the chapters being narrated by a disembodied spirit. The others are narrated by a 13-year-old biracial boy, Jojo, and his mother, Leonie.

Jojo serves as caregiver for his little sister, Michaela (Kayla), and Leonie serves only to have brought these two souls into the world. She is an utterly unlikable character, too haunted by her own ghosts and wrapped up in her own desires to give any thought or care to her children.

This trio lives with Leonie's parents, who Jojo refers to as Mam and Pop. As the novel opens, Mam is dying of cancer, and Michael, Jojo and Kayla's white father, is about to be released from prison after serving a sentence for drug-related charges.

Against Pop's wishes, Leonie packs Jojo and Kayla into her car (along with her drug-addicted friend from work) and heads north to pick up Michael and bring him home.

The poverty and drug use are hard-hitting. Ward's writing is exquisite, dark and beautiful.

While this is a short read, I did feel like the plot dragged on a bit, and I don't think the magical realism element was as well executed as I've seen it done by other authors. Still, this was a very good book, and one I am sure I'll think about for quite some time.

I’m of a mind to don a sandwich board, saying on both the front and back panels “Read Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing” and take to the streets of this addled nation with it. Ward’s book is an African-American masterpiece, simultaneously hard and lyrical, right up there with Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved.

It does have to be noted that Ward’s characters frequently use language that is beyond their conceptual and verbal means, so that a third-person, decidedly non-vernacular quality comes into what are supposed to be first-person narratives; but the writing is so lyrical and compelling that I was able to overlook this inconsistency, once again leaning on the way Randall Jarrell reportedly defined the novel when someone pointed out a flaw in a novel Jarrell admired: “The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.”

Not the least of the appeals of this novel is one of the most endearing portraits of an infant I’ve ever encountered in literature. The relationship between that infant and her protective young brother, both of them stuck with tragically inadequate parents, is movingly rendered.

Lord, as this deeply affecting novel lands on us, Ward is just 40 years old. What more might we yet be gifted with from her? I intend to read her earlier work, and I look forward to her next.

Her first book was more appealing though I don't like dog fighting, early sexual activity forced on young vulnerable motherless girls. This one had vomiting children and drug use and thoroughly horrible life in the pit. I can't imagine why it's on the best seller list and my read this month for my book club.

5 stars doesn't feel like enough.

How to describe a book that is both heartbreaking, sad, raw and yet hopeful all at the same time? That really is the question. I'll start by saying that I found Ward's writing to be haunting, beautiful and poetic. I loved the imagery she provoked. I felt like I was on the farm with the family and then in the car on the journey to pick up Michael at the Penitentiary. I was right there in the barn when the goat was being slaughtered and also there when the police pulled them over.

JoJo, dear sweet Jojo, and his younger sister Kayla live with their Maternal grandparents on their farm in Mississippi. Their Mother, Leonie, lives there as well but she has an addiction problem and although she is their Mother, doesn't really know what to do with them. JoJo loves to spend time with his Grandfather who is teaching him how to be a man. JoJo looks up to his grandfather who tells him stories and is a constant and steady figure in his life. His Grandfather's action speak of love even if he does not say the words himself. I thought their relationship was beautiful. JoJo feels safe, comfortable, accepted, and loved by his Grandfather. As I mentioned his Grandfather is the one thing in his life that he can depend upon. He wants to please his Grandfather and struggles with being thirteen caught between childhood and being a mature teen. He wants to be seen as a man but wants to cuddle with his Grandfather and put his head on his shoulder. There is something quite beautiful in the fact that no matter what JoJo does, he receives love and no judgement from his grandfather. JoJo also lives with his Grandmother who is dying of Cancer. Another constant in his life, she always made sure he was fed when his Mother forgot. JoJo is often left to care for his 3 year old sister, Kayla, who seems to prefer him to anyone else in the family. He is her primary caregiver and serves as her safety net.

Life seems normal, until his Mother announces that she is taking JoJo and Kayla to pick up their father (their White father) from the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Neither child wants to go with their Mother but she prevails and takes them along on an eventful ride to pick up their father and bring him home.

Leonie has loved Michael since he approached her after her brother was killed. She knows how to love him but doesn't quite know how to love her children. She does love them - she just hasn't got Mothering down. Is she a horrible Mother - yes, but yet she is sympathetic as a messed up character who tries and fails. She loves her kids and had a loving Mother but just can't get her act together. Leonie is an addict who is tormented by the ghost of her Brother who was killed while hunting. Her boyfriend and father of her children is White and his family has never accepted her or her children.

Leonie is not the only family member who can see ghosts...that is all I will say about that.

Ghosts!?! who say, well don't let that be a turn off. Seriously, don't! This book is wonderfully beautiful, sad and poetic. I know I have said that before but this book is that good. This book is character driven. It doesn't matter if you lover her characters or hate them, you will love this book. We also see that not all character are good. We the reader see good characters doing bad things but we will forgive them and still love them (ahem Pop).

This book has just about everything but the kitchen sink: racism, mixed families, poverty, crime, death, addiction, parentified children and yes, ghosts!

I had no idea what I was getting into when I requested to read an ARC of this book. I will be 100% honest, I requested based on a friend's review and I was blown away. I have not read Ward's "Salvage the bones" but it is going on my to-read list! Ward has created a poignant raw book that had me turning page after page and loving every single word. I literally read this entire book in one day. Sing, Unburied, Sing is my first book by Jesmyn Ward but it will not be my last!!!!

Highly recommend.

I received a copy of this book from Scribner and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is a beautifully written, character driven, heartfelt novel that takes place in the steamy Mississippi Gulf Coast. The story is about a young black girl, Leonie who has two children, Jojo who is thirteen and Kayla who is a toddler. The children’s father, Michael, is white, and in prison. Michael’s family is hopelessly racist and rejects Leonie and the children, so they live with Leonie’s parents. Leonie is a drug addict and she is rarely around so Mam and Pop have stepped in to raise the kids. Mam is dying of cancer and a broken heart due to her son’s death and spends all of her time in bed, and Pop is quiet, strong and teaches Jojo what he can around the farm. Jojo is brave; he takes care of his little sister Kayla with love and care, despite his mother’s neglect as a parental role model. When Michael is released from prison, Leonie takes her reluctant children away from their grandparents, on a road trip with her friend, Misty, to pick up drugs and then the children’s father.

Throughout the novel, we learn about Pop’s time spent in the penitentiary, and the horrific details that pepper his past. We see how his daughter, Leonie, is selfish, neglectful, bitter and struggles with addiction. We witness Jojo being able to communicate with the dead. These rich characters evoke so much emotion, hope and despair, and I enjoyed my increased understanding of them as they became whole through Ward’s prose.

Jesmyn Ward shows us that the course of our life is not just based on our current existence, relationships, choices and our future potential but also includes our past and how its impact weighs on us. In addition to these living characters in Sing, Unburied, Sing, there is the ghost of Leonie’s dead brother, Given, who she sees when she is on drugs, and Richie, the young boy Pop failed to save when he was in jail as a younger man, who Jojo sees and helps as he searches for answers about his own death.

I really did love this story of love, protection, race and family in the face of poverty down south. The lines between past and present, death and the living and hate and love are fine and the characters often hover between them. Jesmyn Ward does an artful job putting a spotlight on the injustices life may bring and I highly recommend this book!

I read 50-100 books a year. Although child abuse and neglect is an important topic, I found this to be gratuitous with no point. The only good thing about the Mother and Father's drug use is that they were gone most of the time. I was really impressed by Ms. Ward's interview on PBS.

Full disclosure – I wasn’t sure I wanted to pick this one up. I read the author’s previous book, Salvage the Bones, and it wasn’t my favorite. Let me just say that I don’t mind dark/emotionally heavy reads – a lot of what I read packs a hefty emotional punch. I also don’t require glossy happy endings where everyone ends up redeemed and shiny and perfect.

BUT, I do need a shade of hope, somewhere. Salvage the Bones felt like a black hole to me – it was so dark and sad, and I couldn’t find enough hope to, no pun intended, salvage it. So, needless to say, I was wary of this next novel. Especially because it sounded pretty similar to Bones. I was wrong. Sort of. ? It’s dark…but there’s hope!

Sing is, no question, an emotionally heavy read. There were parts that I found so incredibly heart-breaking and frustrating, (almost every section involving Leonie), but the main character, Jojo, was my champion. I adored him! Between Jojo, Pop, and Jojo’s little sister Kayla, there was more than enough hope for me to keep chugging along.

The book really centers around Jojo, but the point of view alternates in some chapters between him, his mother, and Richie – the ghost of a dead inmate from Pop’s past at Parchman Prison, who weaves in a narrative about the old South and Pop’s younger years.

Jojo is a fighter – his chapters were my favorites. I loved every section with him and Pop! Leonie’s sections were the hardest for me to read – to watch her drug addiction overpower and overshadow EVERY single thing in her life, even her children’s well-being, absolutely broke my heart. But those sections felt the most candid and real. It made me think hard about what it must be to deal like that, both from the perspective of the addict, and the addict’s loved ones.

In this story you’ll find ghosts and racism. You’ll see the power and hope-draining cycle of addiction. But, you’ll also see love flex some muscles and watch a boy become a man. Recommended.

Let me start by wholeheartedly endorsing LISTENING to Ward’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” The publishers have enlisted three separate narrators to read the alternating characters and it takes the listening experience to another level. In a sense it’s almost a throwback experience to the old pre-tv radio story times in which one is immersed into the story.

Early on in "Sing, Unburied, Sing," the young son of a barely-there-back-country-voodoo-meth-addicted mother, makes the damning pronouncement that his mother Leonie "kills things." And indeed, death hangs heavy in this novel and a sense of dread is immediately present as the Ward reveals a forgotten place in the backwoods of the South where everything is upside down, where everything is in decay, and where death is not a permanent state but rather is transitory. I'd liken this novel to Daniel Woodrell's revelatory "Winter's Bone" in that it unveils a segment of America that is largely forgotten, ignored, and written off.

Ostensibly, this is a fairly straight forward narrative. Single mother Leonie, her two children, and her junkie friend embark on a road trip to pick up Leonie's boyfriend when he gets out of jail. The story's depth emerges as Ward reveals that three of the characters can see certain wandering dead ghosts--ghosts that it turns out are looking for answers. Ward's literary mastery is evident, though, in the way in which this novel doesn't become a some supernatural story. She's able to do this because she's created characters with whom she so deeply empathizes that their visions don't seem fantastical but seem instead real and necessary as this family tries to come to grips with its past as they are mired down in a present quagmire.

Were one wanting to pair this novel with a piece of non-fiction, I'd recommend Isabel Wilkerson's stunning history of the black America's "Great Migration" out of the Deep South that began in the 1930s (i.e., "The Warmth of Other Suns"). For in Ward's recounting of the grandfather's ("Pop') time at Parchment prison, the reader is reminded that just 75 years ago in America, blacks were still de facto slaves in much of the south as they endured imprisonment without trial, and death came without a second thought from the white ruling class.

"Sing, Unburied, Sing" came at an important time in an America that is deeply divided--largely because people don't know each other, don't know each other's history. Ward bestows humanity on a family whose tragedies most often wouldn't merit more than a passing mention on the backpages of a local newspaper. Her novel has empowered these voices, past and present, to sing out and tell their story.

Key Quotes:

“Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants [...] since Mama got sick, I learned pain can do that too. Can eat a person until there’s nothing but bone and skin and a thin layer of blood left. How it can eat your insides and swell you in wrong ways.”
"Leonie kills things." -Jojo
"And then Leonie laughs, and even though it's a laugh it doesn't sound like one, there's no happiness in it, just dry air and hard red clay where grass won't grow" (Chapter 6) -Jojo
"It feels good to be mean, to speak past the baby I can't hit" -Leonie (Chapter 8)
"Michael takes my face in his warm real hands and his lips meet mine and I am opening all over again losing language losing words, losing myself in that feeling that feeling of being wanted and needed and touched and cradled." -Leonie after getting high (Chapter 8)
Maybe I wouldn't cry, Maybe my heart wouldn't feel likes it was a bird, richoted off a car midflight, stunned and reeling." -Jojo after cop handcuffs him (Chapter 9)

Jojo is a 13-year-old boy whose black mother, Leonie, is a druggie and whose white father, Michael, is in prison. He lives with his grandparents in coastal Mississippi, along with his toddler sister, Kayla, but his unreliable mother pops in and out. When Leonie learns that Michael is about to be released, she and her equally messed up friend Misty take the kids to Parchman to pick him up. We know that this trip is going to be disastrous and just read with our fingers crossed that Jojo and Kayla survive. There are two things that I did not like about this book. First and foremost, it is, as you can imagine, immeasurably depressing. To say that Leonie is a bad mother is an understatement, as she is both neglectful and abusive. She only has eyes for Michael, and neither has any business being a parent. The other aspect that did not appeal to me is the magical realism. Two dead people are visible to some of the characters. One is Given, Leonie’s brother, who was killed by Michael’s cousin. Leonie has never recovered from his loss and seems to care more about him than her children, who are very much alive. The other ghost is Richie, a boy who knew Jojo’s grandfather in prison and wants to get to the heart of what happened there. I just really did not understand the significance of these ghosts and why they were necessary to the story. There is some other voodoo (my word, not the author’s) going on, such as lucky talismans and graveyard stones, and I was OK with those, since they seemed to be perhaps indicative of the culture. The ghosts, though, for me, detracted from the seriousness of the story and lent it an air of mythology that turned me off. They even have full-on conversations with living characters. Perhaps I would have been more accepting of silent ghosts. In any case, I found her earlier novel, Salvage the Bones, to be a much better read.

”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.”
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty

Thirteen year-old JoJo and his younger sister Kayla live with Pop and Mam, his mother’s parents. Big Joseph and is their other grandpa, Michael is their son, and JoJo and Kayla’s father. Leonie, their mother, JoJo and Kayla have lived with her parents for three years, since the day the police took Michael away, before Kayla was even born. Soon, though, Michael will be getting out of Parchman, Mississippi’s State Penitentiary.

Mam is losing her lengthy battle with cancer, these days she’s bedridden, and life is far from easy for this family. The only one seemingly staying in one place is Mam, but even she is transitioning, dreaming of emerging from this confining cocoon of life and becoming free of the pain and suffering.

Pop has his stories that haunt him of his days at Parchman when he was a boy two years older than JoJo is now. He wasn’t the youngest, though, that would be Richie. Richie was twelve. Pop’s dreams tend to take him into the past, sometimes revisiting his days at Parchman, his life since those days.

There’s a journey to drive and pick up Michael upon his release from prison, but the journey is more than a physical one, more than just the drive there and back. There’s Michael’s journey from being an inmate to being free, a mental transition as much, if not more, than a physical one. From prisoner back to husband and father, including a daughter who doesn’t know him. A journey from the past to the present.

There’s a gentle sense of spirituality in this story, weaving in and out of the tale are ghosts of the past hovering, flitting in and out of the story. There are also the ugly tales of dark days, slavery, and the kidnappings that slavery was built upon. Racial tensions. Generational, never-ending poverty. Deprivations. Prejudice. Regret.

And then there’s tales of love. Of hopes and dreams. Of believing in something more than what is. Of opening our heart, mind and eyes to see beyond.

Having never read Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, for which she won a National Book Award, Where the Line Bleeds or Men We Reaped, my only acquaintance with her was reading the collection of essays in The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, for which she was editor. I was not prepared for how thoroughly I would be immersed in this story, or how this feels, beautifully crafted with an immense sense of love and caring for each person. This felt like a living place and these people like they lived and breathed, laughed and cried. When I was in the woods behind Pop’s house with JoJo, I could visualize it all, and when I stood beside Mam, I saw it all, felt everything.

Ultimately, this is an ode to that place where we can find that feeling we may search for our whole lives. That place where we feel we belong, where we are accepted, welcomed, where we can be ourselves. What our hearts see as Home, where we can become ”part of the song.”

Recommended.

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Scribner.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Scribner for providing me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger Warnings: Dead sibling, addiction, cancer, dying family member, drugs

Plot: Jojo and his little sister Kayla live with their grandparents in rural Mississippi, and only occasionally see their mother Leonie. The grandmother is dying of cancer. the grandfather is trying to run the household and teach Jojo life lessons, and Leonie sees visions of her dead brother when she gets high. Then, when Jojo and Kayla’s white father Michael is released from prison, Leonie packs the kids and a friend in a car, and travels across the state to the Mississippi State Penitentiary. a journey that’s full of danger and promise.

It is of no surprise that Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for this novel. She is just such a fantastic writer, and has the ability to make readers of her work empathize with the most flawed characters. Characters who in theory should be the villains of the story, but you end up feeling for them. She makes you ache for them. All of her characters have experienced, or are experiencing an immense amount of pain, and this is reflected in their worldviews, the choices they make, and the lives they live.

The story mainly comes from the perspectives of Jojo and Leonie, who are both people of few words, always on guard, but their internal voices convey everything that they would not say out loud to the reader, and basically set up the entire book. Jojo is coming of age and holds so much resentment towards his mother, who is an absentee parent, while absorbing crucial life lessons from Pop, his grandfather, as he is trying to figure out how to be a man. Leonie on the other hand is the character that put me through the wringer emotionally. She is so deeply flawed, and everything she does or that Jojo says she does or does not do makes you want to hate her, but reading her perspective and what she’s thinking makes you not only empathize, but just ache for her. A drug addict, she’s haunted by visions of her dead brother whenever she’s high, and it’s a punch in the gut to read about it.

Jesmyn’s skill comes through in how she uses her characters- a lot of them are symbolic to further the story. Her writing makes you feel such pain with a story where terrible things just keep happening and there seems no reprieve, but still leaves you feeling hopeful at the end of it. There is no particularly happy ending, nothing is neatly tied up or resolved. Therein lies its beauty. I honestly could not find a single flaw in this book.

This was my first time reading her full-length novels (I’d previously read her memoir, Men We Reaped, and The Fire This Time), and she has become one of my favorite authors. I’m a total sucker for books that make me feel pain and that just sucker- punch me with all the emotions, and Sing, Unburied, Sing did just that. Devastatingly beautiful prose and an absolutely engrossing story, it is undoubtedly one of my favorites of 2017, and one that I urge you to read if you haven’t already.

Wow, where do I even begin with this book. This is definitely a top three favorite from this year of reading!

Heart breaking, heart wrenching, this book provides all the feelings. It is the telling of a interracial family and their struggle in the south. Leonie the children's mother struggles with drug addiction and being a mother while the children's father is in jail. They have two children Jojo and Kayla who recognize their grandparents Mam and Pop as the closest to parents they have. Jojo has the responsibility of taking care of Kayla and making sure her needs are met. Leonie decides that she wants to take the kids with her to pick up their father who is getting released from prison. The trip is detailed in the book with all the mishaps and side trips that occur.

The writing in this book is absolutely amazing. Everything is described in such detail. Being from the south this book really touched me cause in many places there are people struggling with the issues in this book everyday. It is a very realistic look at how many families in the south struggle as well as the ongoing drug battle that is very much at the forefront of the news these days. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

What's all the fuss about? What a morbid dire bleak book!! Disjointed and depressing. Read about half of this book and decided why suffer any more. Seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The four horsemen of the apocalypse would be a comedy compared to this dark saga .

A striking story of familial struggles, unbroken racism, and unrelenting ghosts.

Thirteen-year-old Jojo strives to prove to Pop that he’s a man, that he can handle life on the farm—even when it means taking away life from their animals. With his black grandfather taking on the role of his father, Jojo might have a real shot at growing into a strong, compassionate man. But his real father, a white man named Michael, spends his days in prison. Despite having two fathers, Jojo is still lacking in mothers. His grandmother, whom he calls Mam, is ready to let the ghosts of her past take her home after the cancer has consumed her; and his biological mother, Leonie, clearly doesn’t care about him.

Although Leonie wants to be a good mom, her selfishness swallows every opportunity. Whether it’s her love for Michael, her addiction to meth, or her desire to understand why her dead brother, Given, haunts her each day, Leonie cannot seem to be the mother Jojo and Kayla need.

Once Michael is released from prison, Leonie (and her best friend Misty) take Jojo and Kayla on a road trip to pick him up. With Kayla constantly throwing up, their trip takes a difficult turn. Jojo takes on the role as mother and comforts his baby sister while Leonie comes to grips with her mistakes as a parent.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is told in the point of view of Jojo, Leonie, and Richie—a young man, like Jojo, who found himself in the Mississippi state penitentiary, Parchman, with Jojo’s black grandfather. Given isn’t the only one haunting this family—Richie’s ghost pleads for Jojo to ask Pop to finish the story he’s been telling for years. How did Richie die in Parchman?

Jesmyn Ward’s writing is a perfect blend of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a remarkable tale of legacy, truth, and love.

Book Review: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Published by Scribner, September 5, 2017

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It is a privilege to review this book. As all are aware, it won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Utterly deserving so. The language is glorious. The characters are so deeply and finely drawn. The plot is perfect. Reading this book reminded me of Charles Blows’ book Fire Shut Up in My Bone. The same slow, hot Deep South African-American story that needs to be read by everyone in America. Same with Ms. Ward’s book. It should be mandatory reading for all children, let’s say in middle school. To learn the truth, the reality of African-American in the back country Deep South. I feel like I’m rambling. I don’t have enough good words for this book. I am honored to read and review this book. It deserved the National Book Award, and I am grateful that this book was acknowledged in this way. I can’t wait to read Mr. Ward’s next book. Highly, highly. highly recommended.

I have never read Ward’s work before, and now that I have I will follow her anywhere. Sing Unburied, Sing is a literary masterpiece, and one that fits the time in which we live. It opens up all sorts of thorny questions for examination, but like most thorns, it stings. I received my copy free and early courtesy of Scribner and Net Galley. This title is available to the public now.

Jojo and Kayla have been raised by their grandparents in rural Mississippi; Mam and Pop are their source of love and stability. Leonie, the mother they call by her first name as if she were a sister, drifts in and out, using copious amounts of meth and other drugs. Michael, the children’s Caucasian father, is being released from Parchman, the notorious prison where he has been sent after having killed Leonie’s brother, Given. Given comes to her when she’s high. She doesn’t know it, but Jojo and Kayla can see him, too.

The contours of this story have to look familiar to a lot of people, and we are faced with unanswerable questions. Is it better, for example, for children to be raised by grandparents, though they are infirm and exhausted and have earned some time to themselves in peace and without dependents, or is it better for their parent or parents to take them, although they have no money, job, or parenting skills?

Whether it’s the right thing to do or not—and I’ll tell you right now that for Jojo and Kayla, it isn’t—Leonie swoops in and after overcoming her mother’s resistance, takes the children and heads for Parchman to pick up her man. There is no plan at all in place for once he’s been retrieved. Leonie is not the swiftest deer in the forest, and then of course she’s high a lot of the time, and seems to have been solipsistic from the get-go; at one point in the story Mam tells Jojo that his mama just doesn’t have the mothering instinct.

It’s the understatement of the century.

On their odyssey they encounter racist cops, a Caucasian drug-dealing attorney, and a host of other beings, living and not. The narrative is told in the first person by Leonie and Jojo alternately, with a voice from Pop’s past peeking in once the adventure is underway. Although the characters are traveling physically through most of the story, it’s not about setting; it’s about character. We learn these characters so intimately that it’s almost as if we ride beneath their skins, and we also learn Pop’s terrible secret.

None of this description can convey Ward’s alchemy, her capacity to take the language and shape it into something much more than its parts, nor does it adequately relay her skill, authority, and overwhelming power. Ward is a lion.

That said, if you need a feel-good novel, this book is not for you. It’s a dark, tragic, terrible story, and the characters are largely unlovable ones, but none of this should keep you from it. This novel will be talked about for a long, long time.

Highly recommended to those that love excellent fiction.

Jojo, 13, lives with Mam and Pop and Leonie and baby sister Kayla. Leonie is his mother; Mam and Pop are her parents. His father, Michael, is in prison. Leonie and her family are black; Michael and his family are white. His uncle, Given – Leonie’s brother – had been killed by one of Michael’s relatives. And, they live in rural Mississippi. As we follow Jojo and his family, we learn the backstory of the characters, witness Michael’s release from prison and Mam’s battle with cancer, and experience the many tensions that pervade this book.

Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing is the 2017 National Book Award winner. There is not much that I like about this book. I do not like the characters, the story, or the writing. I read one review of the book wherein the reviewer noted that he/she did not like the “magical realism and fantasy” found in the book; those are the parts that I did like.

I keep trying to understand my knee jerk negative response to this book, starting from the animal slaughter at the beginning through the end of the book. I keep trying to understand this book’s acclaim. I suppose the facts that the book engendered such a strong negative response in me – and that I have continued wondering why I have had this reaction – demonstrate why it is deserving of such acclaim. But, it was not a pleasant experience.

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2017, and written about and lauded by those far more erudite, professorial, and literary-wise than am I, since reading this I've hesitated to even share my thoughts, thinking to do so superfluous. Do I think you should read it? Yes. Would I have chosen it for Fiction Award 2017? I don't think so, because I wouldn't --- couldn't choose. This is why I think awards are silly. There is no "best book" in any category. There are wonderful books of every kind, books that are someone's favorite, change someone's mind or heart or life, open eyes, bring a much needed laugh, have a cathartic effect, but there is no one book that is best for everyone. Too, awards tend to glorify books already in the mainstream, already buzzed, by authors already known (and I'm not saying their fame is undeserved or unearned), while books of equal artistry and beauty languish unread, head to remainder piles and ninety-nine cent plus shipping sale on the store.

That said, this book is beautiful, captivating, riveting, unique of voice, glorious of prose bordering on poetry, and much deserving of all the accolades it has received. A pastiche of magic realism, ghost story, history lesson, gothic tragedy, probing sociological examination, road novel, and prose poem, Jesmyn Ward's lyrical, evocative language is revelatory and her artistry joins what might have been impossibly confused disparate motifs into a panoptic chiaroscuro portrait both intensely personal and universal.

JoJo, a boy on the brink of adolescence, and his baby sister, Kayla, are taken on a road trip by their drug-addicted black mother, Leonie, to pick up her white husband, Michael, about to be released from Parchman prison. Michael's cousin murdered Leonie's brother, whose ghost comes to her when she is high, and at Parchman, Jojo begins to be stalked by the ghost of Richie, who was a doomed prisoner in Parchman with Jojo's beloved grandfather, Pop, and uses Jojo to get back to Pop so he might tell Richie of his fate, of his death, so that he could be released from the netherworld in which so many unburied souls are trapped, their songs unable to be sung.

There are more characters, more complications, layer after layer of connection and disconnect, an epic of multiple epochs, a richness and depth of biblical, Proustian size, miraculously communicated in a book less than 300 pages long. There is so much beautiful language, to begin quoting is dangerous, so I will share just this paragraph, near the end of the novel, which is as beautiful as an aria of grand opera. Listen to the ghost of Richie explaining what he sees:

Across the face of the water, there is land. It is green and hilly, dense with trees, riven by rivers. The rivers flow backward: they begin in the sea and end inland. The air is gold: the gold of sunrise and sunset, perpetually peach. There are homes set atop mountain ranges, in valleys, on beaches. They are vivid blue and dark red, cloudy pink and deepest purple. They are yurts and adobe dwellings and teepees and longhouses and villas. Some of the homes are clustered together in small villages: graceful gatherings of round, steady huts with domed roofs. And there are cities, cities that harbor plazas and canals and buildings bearing minarets and hip and gable roofs and crouching beasts and massive skyscrapers that look as if they should collapse, so weirdly they flower into the sky. Yet they do not.

This continues and builds for another paragraph and a half until the vision disappears and then:

Then darkness. I look to my left and see that world again, and then it is gone. I claw at the air, but my hands strike nothing; they rend no doorways to that golden isle.

Absence. Isolation. I keen.

Though it may be the voice of a ghost child, an innocent denied the life he deserved, it is the song unsung of every human being who has suffered the incomprehensible loss of self in a world they cannot seem to understand, the wail and moan of longing for a place of peace only imagined, never experienced.

Yes, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a brilliant book, a book written from the soul that speaks to the soul and worthy of all praise. Though, as I said, I am not fond of the good/better/best ratrace, certainly this is among the best books of the past year.

In the movie "The Neverending Story," Bastian is so engrossed in the book he's reading that he feels he's become part of the story (in fact, he has). What the book's protagonist, Atreyu, feels, Bastian also feels. This is the connection I felt with Jojo in Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing." I don't know the last time I was that engrossed in a novel.

There's a point where Jojo recalls cutting his foot, the description so vivid it settled into my mind as if it were my memory. When not reading the book that day, I kept coming back to that moment and the sharp pain of the laceration, the blood, the fear, the curiosity of being sliced open. I dreamed about it that night. When I opened the book the next morning, I reached down towards my own foot feeling the phantom of an injury I never personally experienced.

When his stomach hurt, mine twisted in knots. When he was disappointed, I was heartbroken. When he protected his sister, I believed I would do the same. When the terribleness of the world reveals itself to him, and he stands up to meet it, I stood with him as if we were one.

There's mysticism at the root of this story, and magic in Ward's words. The perspective shifts between three characters, all damaged by the terrible traditions of race in America. It's Jojo, though, who is our hero. Somehow his spirit overcomes all that wants to sink him. He's not indomitable or indefatigable, but his humanity is undeniable. Unburied despite being born in the dirt. Who he is resonating like a song from the pages.

I sang along.

This book came highly recommended by people for whom I have a lot of confidence in but it did not do it for me. The use of ghostly dead but still present figures is not what I would choose in a book and for me, this was a distraction. As slow and stifling as the southern climate, the story dragged on interminably, told from the perspective of various individuals. The characters were well drawn and sadly reflective of the lives of too many people today and the author does a great job of making palpable the smells, sights, sounds and emotions. I was anxious to finish the book...not because it was so engaging but because I wanted to be done with it and see what depressing revelations awaited me. It strikes me as the kind of book that is raved about not because it is so wonderful but because people are reluctant to admit that it is overrated.

“I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that it’s something I could look at straight,” says thirteen-year-old Jojo, and by the end of the story, he and the reader have come full circle. With richly drawn characters, Ward links an iconic, multi-generational, present-day story of addiction, shame and guilt drawn with the inherited burden of American history. Alternating between Jojo, his drug addicted mother Leonie, and occasionally the ghost of Richie, a young boy from Pop’s incarcerated past, Jesmyn Ward’s lyrical prose transcends the reader’s expectations of first-person point-of-view authenticity into a haunting and magical work of art.

Writing: 5+ Plot: 5 Characters: 5

A powerful novel and I don’t use that word lightly. The language is riveting and evokes a pervasive sense of physical and emotional space in a way I haven’t felt since reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

The story takes place in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Jojo is a thirteen year-old boy learning to be a man. He lives with his grandparents (“Pop” and “Mam”), his 3 year-old sister Kayla, and his mother (whom he calls Leonie) when she bothers to show up. Mam, Leonie, and both children have the “sight” — an ability to see and hear things that others don’t — and this filters into the story in significant and lyrical ways. The action centers around a trip to Parchman prison to retrieve Michael (the children’s white father) at the end of a three year sentence. However, the real story is about how a person can grow into an honorable and ethical human being when they are in an environment poisoned by bad circumstances.

Jojo, Leonie, and Richie — the spirit of a young boy incarcerated at Parchman with Pop when he was 15 — are alternating narrators. The stories they tell weave together haunting tales of the past with their parallels in the present. Hints of voodoo and the thin veil between this world and the next suffuse the interlocking narratives.

The book is equal parts disturbing and heart warming; the end is quite glorious.

Some good lines
“Pop says a man should look another man in the face.”

“But it follows, even as I follow the trail of tender organ blood Pop has left in the dirt, a trail that signals love as clearly as the bread crumbs Hansel spread in the wood.”

“Even now, my devotion: inconstant.”

“I wait until the nicotine laps at my insides like a placid lake.”

“I blink and I see the bullet cleaving the soft butter of him. “

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This book was difficult for me. At first, I really couldn't figure out what time epoch we were in, or maybe if we were jumping between years. It seemed so important to me to figure out when this story was taking place as if that would allow me to make sense of it. I struggled quite a bit to get interested or attached to the plot. I felt like I was dragging along. I felt like I needed context to understand the characters.

Reading on though, I realized that was exactly the point. Turns out, this book is a haunting that is simultaneously utterly dependent on time and also completely independent of it: a haunting so deeply immersed in the people of the story, their ghosts, and the ghosts of our societal failures and tragedies. If you can imagine a post-apocalyptic world like McCarthy's The Road and apply that feeling you got reading that book to this family, you have the main characters of this novel. They're hopeless and lost, they're beyond despair and completely wrecked, each in their own way. They're in fact so lonely despite being surrounded by family members that you wish you could step in and shake them and make them see what they have.

The entire book is driven by the most intense imageries and analogies: real ghosts mingle with inner demons, drug-induced states intertwine with dreams and spiritual rites and trances, and death meets life at every corner. The plot itself is very scarce and honestly probably adds very little. The family dynamics and each character's development are the main focus of this novel. Each character is multi-layered, complex, and very unique - yet there is a common thread between all of them, a thread that we all can relate to: life is hard, and sometimes you get the shittiest cards dealt, and what you do with it is up to you.

Beautiful words tell a very sad story. I could see this becoming a classic one day, so you should probably read it soon. As I said, I struggled a bit at the beginning but in hindsight, I realize this is part of the experience. I am glad I stuck with it, as I now know, this book will stick with me.

The past, the present and a bit of mysticism combine in this fairly dark tale of a family trying to get out from under the tragedies of prejudice, death, drugs and desperately sought love. There is the love that the main character Jojo holds fiercely for his baby sister. Their relationship, for me, was the most tender and honest in the book. He will do anything to protect this little girl and she clings to him as if her very life depends on it (which it does.) Both these children, for Jojo is still a child even though he has been saddled with adult responsibilities, have been denied the love of their drug addicted mother who can barely hold herself together, let alone care for her children. The only room in her heart is for her husband Micheal, who is just being released from prison. Surprisingly, Michael shows more concern for his kids, even standing up to his racist parents in an effort to defend his family. The only stable adult in the kids' lives is the maternal grandmother who is dying. You can just feel her clinging to life in order to help these kids as long as she still has breath. Add to all of this sadness and desperation, the overlay of that of the ghosts that shadow the family. Their secrets and "bad deaths" keep them tethered to the earth and to these people. Until their tale is told, they may never find peace and thus find eternal rest. I don't know what will ever bring peace to the living in this story. I just hope that Jojo and his sister can hold on to all the love their grandmother has tried to store in them so they may have a chance to face the prejudices and dangers of the growing up and the world they are growing into. Sad, but good.

I know, I'm late to the party. This book made a big splash back in September - everyone was talking about it, and it won the National Book Award. My library, however, did not have enough copies to go around, and I was late putting a hold on it, so the hold I put on it in January finally came around to my turn!

In Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward returns to the same neighborhood in Mississippi that Salvage the Bones was written about. (Two of the siblings from Salvage the Bones show up in a scene in Sing.) The story is told from three different viewpoints: Jojo, a thirteen-year-old boy and the main character of the novel, Leonie, his drug-addicted mother, and Richie, the ghost of a boy Jojo's grandfather met in prison.

This book covers so much that it's difficult to categorize - between discrimination and outright bigotry, bi-racial romance and children, drug addiction, poverty, prison life - deep south gothic, I suppose, would be the best description. Sing really only takes place over a couple of days, but it feels much longer, because Jojo's grandfather tells stories of his time in prison decades prior, Leonie reminisces about high school, and there's just this sense of timelessness over the entire novel.

It's not an easy book. These are hard issues to grapple with, and too many people have to live with these issues. Poverty, bigotry, addiction - these things disproportionately affect the black community, and white people are to blame for the imbalance.

I'm not sure how I feel about the ghost aspect of the book; on one hand I feel like people will see the ghost and decide the book is fantasy - that they don't really need to care about the problems the family faces. On the other hand, the ghost allows us to see even more bigotry and inhumanity targeted at black people. So it serves a purpose.

I'm not sure I like this book. But I'm glad I read it. And that's pretty much going to be my recommendation; it's not a fun read, but it's an important one.

Jesmyn Ward wields the English language with ethereal precision, conjuring an evocative, fable-like story about the Black experience in the American South. No matter your background or history, this is a novel that commands empathy from the first line. "I like to think I know what death is." Spoken by Jojo, one of three POV characters who relate the story in turns, it's a haunting thought when coming from a thirteen-year-old child. Jojo is perceptive beyond his years, in part thanks to the loving guidance of his maternal grandparents, and partly thanks to the less-than-positive yet inescapable influence of Leonie, his mother, and Michael, his incarcerated father. At an age where children are increasing caught between the vision of who they want to become—in this case, a facsimile of his reserved grandfather—and who their upbringing is shaping them into, Jojo's struggles carry high stakes on an intimate scale.

Leonie almost begs for the reader's disdain: neglectful of her children, addicted to drugs, and besotted with a man whose parents still put stock in the color of a person's skin, she fails time and again when given the chance to make things just a little bit better. Yet coiled deep within are vestiges of a worldly self-awareness imparted by her mother. If she could only nurture these desiccated tendrils then perhaps Leonie could return to the woman she once wanted to be.

The final and perhaps most heartbreaking of narrators is Richie, a boy who died while an inmate at Parchman. His history is fatefully intertwined with Pop's, Jojo's revered grandfather. Revealed as an antiquated replica of the Old South, the state penitentiary placed White inmates in charge of Black men working the fields and armed them with trained dogs for enforcement. It's no environment for an adult, much less a child younger than Jojo; not even a man as well-intentioned as Pop can avert tragedy, as we learn while the story unspools across rural Mississippi.

These three voices join together in an alternating chorus, related to one another by the biased attitudes and institutions that have doggedly persisted in spite of all common decency demanding otherwise. Together they show not only the singular struggles of the Black community in the Gulf Coast region, but also bring out the universally human responses we may have to hardship. All three are changed by their shared journey and the individuals encountered along the way, just as we are changed by reading of it.

Sing, Unburied, Sing goes beyond provoking emotion; it makes the reader feel. I often wanted to dig down past the binding and grab the characters. To yell at them, to comfort them, to guide them towards a path of least resistance. The complex sort of urges you associate more with flesh-and-blood friends, rather than engaging characters in a book. Their lives seep out beyond the covers and linger well after you've shelved the book away. Ward has crafted another fine piece of contemporary American literature whose value and meaning will only deepen over time.

Sing Unburied Sing is an exposure of aspects in American society that are uncomfortable to acknowledge but are told with a pointed, honest and heartfelt sense of purpose. Jesmyn Ward’s airs these issue in an unabbreviated depiction of poverty, drug abuse, and racial discrimination in the USA’s Southern States.

The narration is told alternately through the eyes of 13-year-old JoJo and his 31-year-old mother Leonie in vivid detail and sense of surroundings. JoJo is the son of a black mother and white father, Michael, and they have very much experienced racial abuse and discrimination. Leonie, JoJo and her daughter Kayla, live with her mother (Mam) and father (Pop) while Michael is in prison. Pop has really been JoJo’s father figure but is haunted by past events and is currently nursing his dying wife with cancer.

The first two-thirds of the story are quite gloomy and depressing, while Leonie, JoJo, Kayla, and friend Misty take a road trip to collect Michael as he gets released from Parchman Prison, Mississippi. A very strange character, Richie, joins Michael and the family on the way home. Part of the narration is then taken up by Richie and his probing dialogue with JoJo indicates he has unfinished business.

JoJo is a very special, sensitive and empathetic young man who deals with his sick sister with such care and attention it incites jealousy with Leonie. The delirious Kayla only wants to be comforted by JoJo.

What becomes apparent in this poetic incision into the history of racial crimes, is that there are unfinished or untold stories that need closure. The horrors of these crimes are unfathomable and the lives they touched need closure. The song needs to be sung! Sing Unburied Sing!

I felt the book lacked pace and was quite depressing for the first half. In complete contrast, the final half of the book was ramped up again and again until we have an extremely powerful and captivating end to the story. The pressure to narrate a story with a history of such horrors and an obligation to maintain dignity for those that suffered is superbly managed by Jesmyn Ward in this book.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing UK and NetGalley, for an ARC version of the book in return for an honest review.

At first I found this book a little hard to read, but once the characters were fully introduced I was hooked. 

Sing, Unbured, Sing is a short read, it's 285 pages long and it follows the perspectives of JoJo and his mother Leonie. It took me about 90 pages to decided that I wanted to continue reading the story.  The writing style is unique and I think that's what I found difficult at first, but it just took some getting used to. Then it really added to JoJo's character. I also had a hard time sympathizing with the other main character, Leonie. She's a terrible mother, and ungrateful daughter and that was a little triggering for me. 

At it's heart this book is a ghost story, but it's not creepy in the way you would usually think of ghost stories. Which I really liked because instead it's unsettling and it's heartbreaking.  The writing style is simply uncanny. And everything comes together really well by the end of the story, going in a place that took me by surprise, which I always I love.

If you find messy family stories hard to read, this book might not be for you. It almost wasn't for me, because it's hard to read. But sometimes those are the books one needs to read in the moment.  And I am definitely a fan of Jesmyn Ward now. 

In the end I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads. 

I really wanted to like this book. After reading what the book was about, I was intrigued. I couldn't wait to read it. It did not grip my attention early on, but I decided to stick with it. I wish I hadn't. I was one of the most boring books I have ever read. The characters were not interesting and the parts about the ghosts were nearly unreadable. I enjoy books with well developed characters and a thoughtful plot. Unfortunately, this book had neither. I do not recommend it.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is a difficult, powerful, sad, heart-rending book with moments of beautiful affirmation. The title grabs me now that I've finished, leaving me with first one thought about its meaning, then another. This is my first experience reading a work from Ward and it will not be the last.

This story is set in Mississippi, as we meet 13 year old Jojo, his little sister Kayla, and his grandparents, Pop and Mam. Mam is slowly dying from cancer. Leonie, the children's mother, is a "sometimes" event in their lives. And their father is about to finish a prison term at Parchman. This is the lay of the land but there is so much more: the cost of drugs on people and families, continuing racial disparities and hatred, poverty, even the notorious Mississippi prison system, and the new nuclear families and old traditions.

It is such a powerful story, and what characters! I can feel the heat, see the animals in the yard, see not-Given looking at his sister in disappointment, or is it anger? The desperation is palpable. I wonder what will happen to these people I am becoming fond of in spite of their problems (Leonie), their absence from much of the story so far (Michael), and their occasional lack of reality (not-Given).

There is some hope in the end, but it is so complicated and confused with sadness, anger, guilt, an entire web of emotions wrapped around the family--living and dead. Ward's use of "second sight" for some of her characters made this story soar by further revealing old hurts, wounds, needs and an avenue of resolution for some. This introduction of second sight made the element of ghostly figures an honest move in the narrative. There is a streak of the other in this family from old times, now perhaps accentuated in Leonie by drugs, but Jojo, who has no part of drugs, still "sees."
This novel exists in more than the here and now. It lives in the past, the now and some hoped for future. And they, the unburied, do indeed sing, as you will learn if you read this book.

Perhaps my favorite of 2018 so far. Highly recommended.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through

If I’m being honest, I do not enjoy magical realism, as a rule. Ms. Ward is very clever here, however. She front-loads this novel with the realism and saves the magic for the end. It isn’t until the book is halfway over that she really dips her foot in another world and I wasn’t quite sure what was happening at first. As events raced to their close, she pushed my toleration almost to the breaking point, but the denouement was so fantastic that I have to give her credit for a job well done.

Part of my appreciation for this story also comes from the fact that Ms. Ward uses one of my favorite literary techniques: using alternate points of view. The plot unfolds mainly through the eyes of Jojo, a biracial young man, and Leonie, his drug-addicted mother. Jojo and his younger sister live with their black grandparents—Pop, who once spent time in the prison where his white father is now an inmate, and Mam, who is dying of cancer. Leonie shows up to take the kids with her to the prison to pick-up their father, who is about to be released. The bulk of the novel takes place on the road, with the conclusion coming at home, upon their return.

The alternating points of view are very important to making this story work. We get to see that Jojo, who appears on the outside to be on the verge of adulthood, is really very much still a kid. More importantly, we get to see what is going on with Leonie. She is by no means a good mother despite what we learn from her. However, by letting us know her better, Ms. Ward avoids turning her into a caricature of the drug-addicted, absent mother.

In the end, this becomes a brilliant tale of family and the hold a place can have on people. We see deep into not only Jojo and Leonie but Pop & Mam. We get to see harrowing encounters with a policeman and Jojo’s white grandparents, not to mention the past worming its way into the present. Everything about this book exudes emotion and energy.

As a book club selection, I was unsure what to expect from Sing, Unburied, Sing. It is a book I likely would not have chosen for myself, which is why I participate in books clubs to begin with. Of course, success in these selections is hit and miss. This book pushed me right to the edge of the type of things I like in literature and succeeded marvelously. I highly recommend it.

One of the best books I’ve read in a while. “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is about a black American family on the Gulf coast of Mississippi in a fictional town, and has one of the most endearing central child characters in 13-year-old Jojo I’ve come across. Jojo has to act the part of surrogate parent to his toddler sister, whom he defiantly calls “Kayla”, rather than Michaela - in strong recognition of his black roots and rejection of his white convict father Michael for whom she is named. Jojo shoulders the burden of protecting Kayla because his substance addict mother, Leonie, who had him when she was still a teenager herself, is hardly capable of providing care for them.

Jojo teeters on the edge of childhood under the chief care of Pop (his grandpa), who is grappling with the ghosts of his past, while helplessly watching his wife, whom the kids call Mama, die of cancer. The narrative flits between Jojo and Leonie, as well as a real ghost, Richie, who haunts Jojo with some unfinished business that he wants help with. The first-person narrative provides the reader with some empathy for the incompetent mother Leonie even as she fumbles along and struggles with her role as wife, daughter and mother, facing rejection from her children and silent disappointment from her parents, while having to confront her hostile and racist in-laws who still think of her as dirt and responsible for leading their former football-star Son down the twisted path and to his downfall.

Ward paints an engaging character in Jojo, and his close bond with Kayla (the latter given so much believable personality even though she is mostly pre-verbal) is lovingly detailed and the effect is both poignant and heartbreaking. At the heart of the novel is a road trip Leonie takes with her children to pick up Michael from prison that shows up all the problems of the relationship Leonie has with her resentful children, the situation not helped by her white junkie friend, Misty, who comes along to visit her boyfriend. Ward is adept at showing all the subtle and none-too-subtle signs of racial prejudice and discrimination, even between friends. She also manages to make strong connections between pre- and post-slavery America through Pop’s story that begs the question if things have really changed all that much.

Ward’s fluid prose flows as smoothly as the water imagery that is constantly being conjured up so that it is with a feeling akin to being drowned by horror and sadness when Pop comes to the end of his narrative and the ending of the novel. An uncomfortable but yet a powerful book that demands to be read.

A realistic book where ride-hopping ghosts feel as natural as a toddler vomiting on a long trip is a feat of nature. It simply should not be possible, but Jesmyn Ward achieves it with ease in SING, UNBURIED, SING.

Everything about this book is pitch perfect. I rarely read anything that doesn't stop me at some point to notice that I'm reading. It's one of the horrors of growing up. I used to read everything by just diving in and living in that world for the length of the book. Nowadays, I notice far too often that this is a book. That didn't happen here. I didn't notice anything but a story I got sucked into and read voraciously from the first page to the end.

There are plenty of great reviews by people who know better than me why this is a good book. I am not going to pretend to know. I just know this is a book I felt intensely and lived inside while I read it.

Every scene is impeccable like a well-preserved antique: not in a bright shiny way - just in a refined way, sort of soft and easy, no matter the subject matter. (Maybe this is what "lyrical" means.) Given the subject matter of parental drug use, a son who has taken the world on his shoulders, race relations, the worst prison in the country, family dynamics, poverty, cancer... Those things are not usually written with agility. They are often "important," but not usually graceful. SING, UNBURIED, SING is. There's a light but purposeful touch.

This is a book -- and they seem to come along only rarely -- that reminds me exactly why it is so vital, life-affirming and essential to read.

This is a book about families and ghosts, about race and relationships. It's magical and engrossing and I really enjoyed reading something that is so far outside of my comfort zone. It tells the story of Jojo who at 13 years old is responsible for his sister Kayla (Michaela) because his mother Leonie is too stoned, too drunk or too irresponsible to be a good parent. They all live with Leonie's parents whom Jojo calls Mom and Pop whilst he calls Leonie by her first name, never calling her Mom.

Jojo, Leonie and Mom can all see spirits but this is not a ghost story; it's a book about spirits seeking peace and the fine line between the living and the dead. At times it's raw and shocking and at others it's mystical and magical. Mom and Pop are wonderful characters and Jojo is truly heroic. Pop has been to prison and carries the scars of the time he spent there. Jojo's father is also in prison - the same prison - and the story covers the road trip that Leonie and the children take with one of Leonie's friends to bring Michael home when he is released.

Michael is white whilst Leonie and her family are black and this is also a book about race and ignorance; I don't want to spoil the story but would recommend the book to everyone who thinks that a story about race, spirits and prison would not appeal to them - read it and be surprised!!

This strange, sad, beautiful novel grabs hold of the reader's emotions from the get-go, and holds on until the end. It is the story of a beleaguered family in southern Mississippi; 13-year old Jojo and toddler Kayla are the children of Leonie (African American) and Michael (white), but depend upon Leonie's parents Pop and Mam (who is dying of cancer) for love, sustenance, and what order there is in their lives. Leonie is an addict, and cannot express her love for her children or care for them properly. Michael is in Parchman prison in northern Mississippi. He is due for release, and Leonie drives up to pick him up, bringing the children with her on a road trip from hell. When they finally get home, it is to find Mam at death's door, and Michael's family (still) alienated from their son and his wife. Things proceed from there, and the homecoming is even harder than the roadtrip. Meanwhile, Ward introduces two ghosts, Leonie's brother Given (killed by a cousin of Michael), and Richie, who was in Parchman prison with Pop many years ago.

If it sounds as if there is a lot going on. There is, but the narrative flows smoothly and compellingly; this is one book where a plot summary does not represent the novel. What I found remarkable was how Ward makes these troubled people into rounded characters with whom one can empathize. More broadly, the horrors of racism and its consequences are vividly brought to life: the book is hard to read in places, because what is described is so horrible. The writing is beautiful and at times poetic. It took my a while to get used to the shifts in diction, but in time, like the complex plot, the language all worked together. A wonderful book. Along with many awards, it's been chosen as the first month's choice in a new book club started by the New York Times and PBS. The book will be discussed with Ms. Ward on air late this month, and I certainly plan to listen.

Author Jesmyn Ward takes me into an area of rural Mississippi. One I won't soon forget. Scorching racial unrest frames the lives of an African-American family. I can smell the sweat, share the hatred and feel the unyielding tension. There's an overriding feeling of a strong disconnect that's beyond repair. Beyond hope. Inch by trembling inch, I worked my way through the somber storyline with a clenched fist and tightened jaw. This well-written narrative held me in a trance from which there was no escape.

13-year-old JoJo's dreams of a better life, a childhood, had been shattered. He'd been forced to play surrogate mother to little sister Kayla. Absentee mother Leonie, stumbles around the house in a drug-induced fog. That is, when she's home. The children are left to their own devices having to completely fend for themselves. Sad. They all live with Leonie's parents, Mam and Pop. Mam the once proud matriarch of the house, had been sidelined to bed with a disease that had been slowly eating her away. Reduced to skin and bones. Pop ravished by demons from the past was now a shadow of his former self. He lives as prisoner within the cage of his tortured mind. Ghosts have invaded their lives. Tear at them everyday. There's no rest.

Hardships found their foothold that won't let go. An unbearable weight burdens this dysfunctional family with a sullen history of prison, drug dependency, terminal disease and a dispirited feeling of hopelessness. It's the worst of times. The deck was stacked heavily against them. Kinship is tested time and time again with each failing day moving them further and further apart. This character-driven tale weeps for lives that had been slowly eroded away like a rainstorm washing debris off a roof. A gripping story from sad beginning to heart-wrenching end. 

Although recognizing a strong nod to YA novel “A Day No Pigs Would Die,” I was drawn to Jojo, Pop and Mam from the beginning. I quickly grew tired of Leonie and Kayla, and then, unfortunately, came the agonizing, slow-motion, vomit-filled (literally!) road trip to the prison to pick up Michael. I almost gave up entirely, but I felt like there had to be more, since the book had been so highly praised. I wasn’t sure what to make of young Richie’s ghost, but I was willing to buy in for a time. With another strong nod to “Of Mice and Men,” I did appreciate his addition to the story. But then finally the story kind of took off on its own, more original tack, and the ending was definitely worth the read.

(I voluntarily reviewed an ARC for For The Love of Fictional Worlds)

I am SPEECHLESS.

I am in AWE.

I am CAPTIVATED.

There are times when you need fluff; but there are times that you need dysfunctional emotional drama to keep you glued to your book; disregarding all and everything beyond the characters in the story – and that’s exactly what the author does for her readers.

This book creates a setting with multiple POVs (pretty much endeared me to the author immediately!); the main of them is that of Jojo, a young 13 year old boy who is more of a parent to his younger than his mother, Leonie has ever been. Another perspective you get is that of Leonie’s – a drug addict who is slowly being haunted by the ghost of her brother, a victim of a racist attack. Jojo and his sister live with Leonie’s parents; Mam and Pop; Mam suffering from cancer and withered by chemo and Pop troubled by his own dark past!

The author describes the plot, the place and the characters in detail, in ways that seep right into your soul – the writing is brilliant, enchanting and captivates the reader right from the start. The author has a talent of vividly describing the place, the characters and the feelings in ways that shows exactly how humans are in reality.

I adored the lyrical style of writing – even through all the horrific parts, the dysfunctional relationships and short sighted decisions; all were exquisitely captured in words; and showed that beneath the darkness of a human soul, lies the hope for a bright life.

I cannot express appropriately, or even succinctly how this author touched my soul with her words, her characters and her story – a story that could have been yours or even mine, now or in another time!

Thanks to NetGalley and to Scribner for providing me with an ARC copy of this book that I freely chose to review.
Sometimes, I’d try to write them down, but they were just bad poems, limping down the page: Training a horse. The next line. Cut with the knees.
It stays with me, a bruise in the memory that hurts when I touch it.
I would throw up everything. All of it: food and bile and stomach and intestines and esophagus, organs all, bones and muscle, until all that was left was skin. And then maybe that could turn inside out, and I wouldn’t be nothing no more. Not this…
“Because we don’t walk no straight lines. It’s all happening at once. All of it. We are all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.” Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. “My son.”
Both of us bow together as Richie goes darker and darker, until he’s a black hole in the middle of the yard, like he done sucked all the light and darkness over them miles, over them years, into him, until he’s burning black, and then he isn’t. There…
“Let’s go,” I say. Knowing that tree is there makes the skin on my back burn, like hundreds of ants are crawling up my spine, seeking tenderness between the bones to bit. I know the boy is there, watching, waving like grass in water.
I decided to start with some quotes (and I would happily quote the whole book, but there would be no point) because I know I could not make its language justice. This is a book about a family, three generations of an African-American family in the South and it has been compared to works by Morrison and Faulkner, and that was what made me request the book as they are among my favourite authors. And then, I kept reading about it and, well, in my opinion, they are not wrong. We have incredible descriptions of life in the South for this rural family (smells, touch, sound, sight, taste, and even the sixth sense too), we have a nightmarish road trip to a prison, with some detours, we have characters that we get to know intimately in their beauty and ugliness, and we have their story and that of many others whose lives have been touched by them.
There are two main narrators, Leonie, a young woman, mother of two children, whose life seems to be on a downward spiral. Her white partner is in prison for cooking Amphetamines, she does drugs as often as she can and lives with her parents, who look after her children, and seems to live denying her true nature and her feelings. Her son, Jojo, is a teenager who has become the main support of the family, looking after his kid sister, Michaela, or Kayla, helping his grandfather and grandmother, rebellious and more grown-up and responsible than his mother and father. Oh, and he hears and understands what animals say, and later on, can also see and communicate with ghosts. His grandmother is also a healer and knows things, although she is riddled with cancer, and his baby sister also seems to have the gift. The third narrator is one of the ghosts, Richie, who before he makes his physical (ghostly?) appearance has been the subject of a story Jojo’s grandfather has been telling him, without ever quite finishing it, seemingly waiting for the right moment to tell him what really happened. When we get to that point, the story is devastating, but so are most of the stories in the novel. Fathers who physically fight with their sons because they love an African-American woman, young men killed because it was not right that a black man win a bet, men imprisoned for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and for being the wrong race… The stories pile up and even the ghosts fight with each other to try and gain a sense of self, to try to belong.
This is magic realism at its best. As I said, the descriptions of the characters, the locations, and the family relationships are compelling and detailed. But there are elements that break the boundaries of realism (yes, the ghosts, and the style of the narration, where we follow interrupted stories, stream of consciousness, and where the living and those who are not really there are given equal weight), and that might make the novel not suitable for everybody. As beautiful as the language is, it is also harsh and raw at times, and incredibly moving.
Although it is short and, for me at least, a page turner, this is not a light read and I’d recommend approaching it with caution if you are particularly sensitive to abuse, violence, drug use, or if you prefer your stories straight, with no otherworldly interferences. Otherwise, check a sample, and do yourselves a favour. Read it. I hadn’t read any of this author’s books before, but I’ll be on the lookout and I’ll try and catch up on her previous work. She is going places.

Jesmyn Ward is a great creator of characters. I think what separates her from so many other storytellers is her ability to give us an experience inside the lives of people that most of us are never going to get otherwise. Her fiction is definitely “regional”, but in her case, I think that’s a virtue — it adds to exactly that ability to bring near something very far from most us.

The story is set in the rural south — Ward has said that she draws inspiration from her childhood home of DeLisle, Mississippi near Bay St. Louis. Playing to her strength in creating strong, deep characters, Ward tells the story from the alternating perspectives of four central characters:

Jojo — a thirteen year old boy, on the verge of full male responsibility, and the safe haven of his young sister Kayla.

Leonie — Jojo’s unmothering mother, seemingly lost in a world nobody would have planned. She lives with her parents, a mother dying of cancer and a father trying to hold things together, while she waits for her husband to finish out a prison sentence at Parchman. In addition to Jojo, she has another child, an infant girl named Kayla. And she has a friend, who encourages the worst in her.

Given — the ghost of Leonie’s brother, murdered by a group on a hunting trip. Given was the only black member of the trip, apparently invited as a curiosity or an amusement.

Richie — also a ghost, once a young inmate at Parchman’s and a friend to Leonie’s father, Pop. Richie died in an escape attempt.

Other characters are also critical to the story. Pop is the head of the family at the center of the story, Leonie’s and Given’s father, Jojo’s grandfather and father figure, and Kayla’s grandfather. Mama is Pop’s wife and Leonie’s mother. Mama is in the final stages of cancer, a diminished version of herself now, but still a strong presence and a potential, if not real, role model for Leonie.

Kayla, although an infant, often pushes the story forward, just with her presence as someone whose life hasn’t yet taken full form. Michael is Leonie’s husband and Jojo’s and Kayla’s father. Michael finishes his time at Parchman and rejoins the family during the story, bringing with him his own new set of tensions — Michael is a white man, and his own father does not accept his marriage to Leonie or his fathering two children with her.

You toss the characters together, in the situation Ward has set up, and the story happens. She has that ability to draw characters so fully that they carry the story, as if they had their own autonomy — she doesn’t have to push the story forward, it flows naturally from the characters.

The story contains two intersecting threads. One is the story that revolves mostly around Leonie and Jojo. Leonie is going nowhere, except that she is getting back together with her husband Michael. With Pop aging, and Mama dying, she’s called to become a stronger figure in the lives of her children, but she’s not up for the challenge. Jojo still has Pop, and he has Kayla. But he’s increasingly on his own. It’s difficult to see Michael as a strong, positive influence for Jojo, not that he is a bad father so much as he and Leonie seem to isolate themselves from their own family. And of course, as the story begins, Michael has been an absentee father while serving his prison sentence.

The second story is the story of the ghosts. Given and Richie have died before the story begins, but they are in some sense “unburied” — they haven’t been laid to rest. Just the opposite. They died with issues. The world may not be just, and their deaths are not just, but at least they would like to understand, from some point of view, why they died — what sense to make out of it.

Mama says, in assuring Jojo that she will not become a ghost herself when she dies, “The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it’s so awful even God can’t bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.” That’s the situation for Ritchie and Given.

Not everyone can see or talk with Given and Richie. The characters who can are special, and part of their being special, I think, is that they can help Given and Richie along to some potential resolution, and their doing so could possibly help them, Jojo and Leonie, to resolutions in their own lives.

I appreciated the shifting points of view in the story — it plays to Ward’s strong empathy for her characters. She lives, and to the extent we can, allows us to live inside the lives of her characters, experience the world of the story as they do.

I won’t spoil the story much by saying it’s not all going to get tied up neatly. It’s all a little bit too real for that.

I always love reading books set in the South. This book is a wonderful example of how a great writer can capture the soul of the South and bring it to life. This book is set in the Mississippi Delta and Gulf Coast. Being from Mississippi herself, the author is able to poetically and passionately describe the Mississippi Delta and Coast in all it's true character. The South is something that just lives deep in your heart and even if you leave, you'll never get the South out of your heart or mind.

The author is able to capture with words, the soul of Mississippi of decades past – the land, the poverty, the racism of the past that is so hard to be left in the past, the southern folklore, the strong spirituality of the African-American “healer”, the ghosts and spirits that are all around us, seen, heard and felt only by those with the “gift”.
We are taken through the history of rural Mississippi to times and places that aren't nice or pretty, but through a harsh reality for many.
{Can I please tell the “Yankees” reading the book that ALL of Mississippi is not this way, nor ever was}

The book is set in rural Mississippi, in poverty, where the black grandparents are raising their 2 biracial grandchildren. They are the only strength, family stability and love these children have.
River - “Pop”, is a quiet but very strong character who has emotional scars of his own related to his embarrassment of serving time in Parchman prison and of one particular responsibility he had to carry out.
Mam – the grandmother, a very gifted healer who practiced the ancient ways of early African- American healers [ strongly suggests she was similar to a voodoo priestess]. Mam has the ability to “read” the plants, trees, and to hear, but not see, the ghosts and spirits. During the story, Mam is already bedridden, dying of cancer. She still has a strong and binding presence in the story.
Leonie gave birth to the 2 biracial children but I'd never call her a mother and neither do the children. She is a self absorbed drug addict who sees her dead brother, Given, but only when she's high on drugs.
Michael is the white father who is absent most of the book since he's in Parchman prison.
JoJo, the 13 year old biracial son/grandson seems to be who ties this dysfunctional family together. JoJo's story is a heartbreaking story of coming of age in poverty, in rural Mississippi, born of very young parents ill equipped to raise him or his 3 year old little sister, Kayla. JoJo has inherited from Mam, the whole realm of the “gift”. He has the ability to see, hear, feel ghosts and spirits, he also is described as being able to “understand” the plants, trees and animals.
We have just a few glimpses of this powerful ability in 3 year old Kayla also.

[when JoJo is in the woods with the tree full of ghosts] Quoted from the book:

She faces the tree, nose up to the air. Head tilted back to see. Her eyes Michael's, her nose Leonie's, the set of her shoulders Pop's, and the way she looks upward, like she is measuring the tree, all Mam. …......
“Go home”, she says ….................
Kayla begins to sing, a song of mismatched, half garbled words, nothing I can understand. Only the melody, which is low but still loud as the swish and sway of the trees, that cuts their whispering but twines with it at the same time. And the ghosts open their mouths wider and their faces fold at the edges so they look like they're crying, but they can't. And Kayla sings louder. She waves her hand in the air as she sings, and I know it, know the movement, know it's how Leonie rubbed my back, rubbed Kayla's back, when we were frightened of the world. Kayla sings, and the multitude of ghosts lean forward, nodding. They smile with something like relief, something like remembrance, something like ease. ….........
Kayla hums over my shoulder, says shhh.

Makes me wonder if the author is leaving the possibility for a sequel involving JoJo and Kayla ?? Can I be the 1st to call dibs if so !!
This would be an excellent book for English/Lit class, whether high school or college. A very powerful, moving, thought provoking book.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

From National Book Award-winner for Salvage The Bones, Jesmyn Ward brings us this look at a place that I am very familiar with. The Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Ms. Ward uses language that pulls you in and makes you see, makes you feel. What an amazing gift she has!

Jojo, who is 13 and his toddler sister, Kayla and Leonie, their drug addicted mother live with Mam and Pop on a farm along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Mam is dying of cancer and Leonie is rarely there. She spends most of her time getting high and talking to her dead brother. She is about as unfit to be a mother as the yard dog.

Their father, Michael is currently a guest of the state, at Parchman. Parchman is not a place anyone would go willingly. For years mothers have used it as a way to keep teenagers in line. Just a drive by and you know it’s not a good place. Michael is also white, while Leonie and her parents are black. His family wants nothing to do with Leonie or their grandchildren. But Leonie loves him even though his own family killed her brother and covered up the murder.

When Michael is released from Parchman, Leonie takes the children and her best friend and heads north to pick him up. And on the trip back, it looks like Michael wasn’t’ the only one to get in the car with them. Richie, a spirit, has hitched a ride. He knows Jojo can lead him to Pops and he needs to know what happened to him in Parchman and how he died.

This portrait of Mississippi past and present is one of the most moving, raw, and beautiful stories I have read. Being from the Gulf Coast and knowing The Kill, their claim to fame being the home of Brett Favre and an odd bar with bras on the ceiling, this book made me cry, it actually was painful to read some parts because the author is so brutally honest about a subject few talk about. At least not in Mississippi.

You can pretty it up on the outside, but at the core, it’s still goes on everyday, the racism, the sense that they aren’t as good.

This story of loss, and family and prejudice was heart wrenching. The strength of the characters enduring burdens they should never have had to bear. There is no fairness, no equality, no respect for another human being, and yet they all endure. They keep moving.

Pops was my favorite character in this novel. The way he quietly took what ever came his way and made the best of it. Besides Leonie, the rest of the family never complained, whined or bucked the system in place. They just put their heads down and did what needed to be done.

I’m really worried that I’m not going to be able to do this book justice with a review. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a while. This is a novel about the south, about parenting, about racism, about growing up, about ghosts – especially those inside of us, and it’s about heartache. It’s all these things and more. It’s raw and unflinching. It’s gritty and atmospheric. It’s so beautifully written – Jesmyn Ward is one of my favorite writers and this is some of the best of her work! If you’re looking for something light and breezy, steer clear. If you’re looking for something that will push you to think a little harder and care a little more, then pick this one up. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the place and characters that Jesmyn Ward explores in this book. This book is a punch in the gut but the best punch in the gut you can have. The characters come alive – there is an intimacy in the way that Ward writes her characters. I felt as if I knew them, lived with them, felt them. Jojo will stay with me for some time. A child forced to become a man and care for himself and his sister. A child who is drowning in parental neglect and abuse yet finds solace with his grandparents who love him. The touches of magical realism (specifically, ghosts) were so beautifully done. Each of these ghosts tell a story that will break your heart. The exploration of drugs, violence and racism and its impact on one family is superb. This one spoke to me. I’d like to go back and read it again because it was so beautiful that I just know that I’ve missed some of it in just one reading. It’s an intense read that has many pieces that are painful to read. But, that darkness and pain is worth it given how engrossing it is. It’s a beautifully told story that you won’t forget. Jesmyn Ward is an amazing storyteller. You can’t go wrong with this one … it’s just magnificent!

Sing, Unburied, Sing is heartbreaking and intense. It is the contemporary, rural South where location and characters are inextricably intertwined. This is Jesmyn Ward’s third novel, and she is certain to become one of South’s most notable writers.

The story is of a black family in coastal Mississippi, laden with the pain of memories, disease, drugs, and obsessions. But it’s also a story of love, survival, and deep devotion. The chapters are told from the perspective of Jojo, a sensitive, prescient thirteen-year-old and his mother, Leonie. Jojo and his three-year-old sister, Kayla are raised by Pop, their grandfather who cares for them as well as his cancer-ridden wife, Mam, and their small home and livestock. Leonie waitresses in a bar, gets high on meth, and is consumed with her white imprisoned boyfriend, Michael, also the father of her two children.

Focusing on the struggles of each character, Ward brings racial conflict front and center - from a story of slaves kidnapped from their homes in Africa and the harrowing ship ride to America, to Pop’s time in prison as a young man trying to look after a black child who was also jailed and brutalized. And we get a glimpse into Michael’s family - enough to witness extreme prejudice, violence, and hate’s repercussions.

Tight knit, Jojo and Pop care for Kayla and Mam, and Pop tries to prepare Jojo for manhood; while Leonie works and gets high, planning for the day Michael is freed from prison. Jojo listens to Pop’s stories of growing up and of his time prison; of the boy he tried to save; and of the blood on his hands. He is haunted, and they are all plagued with ghosts in some respect.

Ward is able to weave together the mystical - through memories and specters from the past who can’t find their way home - and a jarring reality of racism and drug addiction. This is not an easy book to read, but it is certainly worthy of the effort.

SING, UNBURIED, SING

This is the story of a dysfunctional family in rural Mississippi consisting of Pop and Mam, grandparents to JoJo and Kayla. Also in the picture is JoJo and Kayla's mother, Leonie. Each chapter is told by a different character and their perspective and this works very well.

JoJo is only thirteen, but he is the primary caretaker to his toddler baby sister, Kayla. I don't think I have ever read of such a thick and loving relationship as the kinship between JoJo and Kayla. He totally loves, adores, and cares for her. Kayla only wants JoJo and loves him more than she loves anyone else in the family -- especially her mother, Leonie.

Leonie is an absent mother, strung out on drugs and love for her prisoner boyfriend, Michael, the father of her two children. Leonie has zero patience, tolerance, understanding, or it seems, love for her two children. She leaves their care and upbringing up to Pop and Mam. She comes and goes from her family's life as she wants -- and mostly she is NOT present.

The story starts out strong and stays that way. A road trip to the prison is an eye-opening experience in the character's dispositions, love and caring, motherhood, experiences, and friendships.

This book is strong on history and has a surreal and haunting feel. The writing is crisp, clean, and lovely. Hands down, JoJo was by far my favorite character, I absolutely loved him. The book moves steadily dealing with family, love, death, the past, and even some ghostly spirits.

This is the second book by Jesmyn Ward I have loved and enjoyed, the first being SALVAGE THE BONES. If you haven't enjoyed either of these two books, do yourself a favor and read them. Both come highly recommended.

4.5 stars
What a read. I found myself thinking about these characters even when I was not reading the novel. This novel is about racism, injustice, family and about maturity. I liked the notion of the gifts that some of the characters exhibited as I felt it added wisdom and complexity to these characters. I was having second thoughts about the spirits who surfaced in the novel, for I believed that this novel had enough going for it without adding another element but again I believe they added another layer to some of the characters.

Leonie was a self-centered, immature individual and to call herself a mother was stretching the truth. A mother is more than just the person who carries a child in their womb for 9 months, a mother steps up to the plate and does battle for her children. I found myself disliking Leonie more and more as I read. It was her lack of trying, her lack of seeing the whole picture and her lack of appreciation that hammered away at me. Her son Jojo melted my heart. For being only thirteen years old, his maturity level and comprehension was amazing. I have to believe that his exposure to his Pop and Mam shaped this young man. His understanding of the world and his attention to it, allowed him to know how to react and speak. His Pop was a strong individual, someone who tried to help those who wanted it. I could see the similarities between Pop and Jojo and I saw where Jojo’s future was headed. Mam is dying but she is trying. Mam’s story was heart-warming and as she now laid in her bed, her story was not over yet. This is not a fast read, it is a read that needs to be savored and valued. I highly recommend this novel as the individuals who made up this novel will touch you one way or another.

“Sing, Unburied, Sing” revolves around a Mississippi Coast family, told in multiple narratives: Jojo, a young boy coming of age; Leonie, his mother battling drug addiction and hallucinations of her dead brother when she is high; and Richie, the ghost of a young boy once imprisoned at Parchman Mississippi State Penitentiary. Jojo, his toddler sister, Leonie and a friend head up to Parchman to retrieve Jojo’s father, a white man who’s been serving time. Jojo’s grandfather, Pop, objects to the trip, which turns into a harrowing experience for the boy, a journey that transcends past and present when Ritchie arrives.
The book examines this fractured family with stalwart Pop as its unifying center, exposing the ugly truths that sometimes make up an American family, but also the strengths beneath. It’s an intimate portrayal of a family grappling with both hope and despair in many aspects of their lives.
Ward’s beautiful, expressive language resonates throughout the book, drawing us into her reality, allowing us to feel and witness. Reading her story is akin to listening to music, lilting and powerful at the same time.
“When we pull off the highway and onto a back road, the sky is dark blue, turning its back to us, pulling a black sheet over its shoulder,” Jojo says as they make their way through Mississippi.
The audio version of the book is available with Chris Chalk, Rutina Wesley from “Queen Sugar” and “True Blood” fame and Kelvin Harrison Jr., a New Orleans native, reading passages. The book is also a finalist for the 2017 Kirkus Prize — and I’m sure more to come.

There were things I loved about this book and things that I didn't like as much. It's still a solid 4 stars for me though. It's beautifully written. Similar to Salvage the Bones, this book is a lens into the lives of an African American family in the Mississippi Delta. It's raw and real and powerful. It also incorporates past stories of the family members to give a broader look at how this family has lived over decades, which touches on Jim Crow-era and today.

As many other reviewers have said, there is a lot of magical realism, so if that isn't your thing, I would not recommend reading this. I love magical realism. That being said, it was not executed as well as I would have liked. The chapters in which the main narrator was a ghost were really good. However, in the chapters of other narrators experiencing ghostly encounters, I was confused at times as to what was going on and who was saying what. This is because some of the characters had the sight while others didn't, so there were multiple people speaking at a time. I feel like this could have been better written, and it would have solved my confusion.

Jojo and Kayla live with their grandparents, and the grandmother is dying from cancer. Their mother is a mostly absent drug addict and their father is in prison. When the father gets released from prison, the mother takes her two kids and a drug addict friend on a road trip to get him. Also, there are ghosts.

Jojo is thirteen and has way more responsibility than he should be dealing with at that age. He looks after his sister and is the one person who really takes care of her. I adored Jojo. He was the best developed character, and my heart was invested in him and where his story was going. The whole road trip, which is a good portion of the book, I was worried about Jojo and Kayla.

There is a magical realism element to the story. Jojo, Kayla, their mother, and their grandmother all have a "gift" and can see ghosts. Not all ghosts at all times, but they have some contact with the spirit world. The ghost part of the story was iffy for me. In some ways, I enjoyed that part and found it added insight to other characters, but in some ways it was just too much.

Sing, Unburied, Sing deals with some tough topics, including poverty, racism, child abuse/neglect, and addiction.

Lyrical writing. Haunting story.

This was one of those rare books you can't stop once you start for anything except sleep. I know a lot of yall said you're over "struggle Black" books but it is odd how, yes, it is about poor people (not just poor Black people either) in Mississippi and it is about struggle but it's so lyrical like poetry or music and the story has elements of suspense that you weren't really expecting melded into some serious issues ranging from poor parenting, drugs, family drama, etc.

It is unlike any book I've ever experienced. As I was going along with it...I thought to myself that this woman is already one of the greatest writers of my time.

I gave it an A-. My ONLY complaint was that as the story moved from character to character, it was difficult to believe that all the characters had the same type of subconscious thought. Like...everyone was so deep and musically descriptive with the way he or she thought and how he or she explained what he or she were thinking. No way everybody was that deep. Some people describe a stick as a stick. Someone else would describe a stick as a bug infested branch partially covered in the dirt from a rebellious ant. (This will totally make more sense after you finish. I promise. LOL!)

Damn, this is a powerful book—absolutely worthy of all the hype it's been receiving. Jesmyn Ward set the bar high with Salvage the Bones, and has surpassed it with Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Sing, Unburied, Sing isn't a ghost story, but a story about ghosts: the haunting legacies of troubled pasts, both personal and collective. It's a portrait of a broken family as its members reckon with addiction, death, grief, love and forgiveness.

Thirteen-year-old Jojo lives in rural Mississippi with his beloved grandparents; his meth-addicted mother, Leonie; and his baby sister, Kayla. When Leonie receives word that Jojo's father is being released from prison, she takes the kids with her to pick him up. While at the prison, Jojo realizes for the first time that he shares the same gift as his mother: he can communicate with the dead. There, the ghost of a 13-year-old boy, Richie, senses something familiar in Jojo and follows him home to seek closure.

Ward's writing is achingly lyrical, visceral and intimate—her characters pulse off the pages as if they're real. In this powerful novel, she evokes both the personal pain of one family, and the much larger collective pain brought on by generations of systemic racism and injustice. Her characters are thrust into difficult situations where they are forced to make unfathomable choices—clinging to the faith that they are doing what's right.

This is the kind of book that hurts, but for everything that it strips you of, it replenishes with hope and love.

The writing first and foremost kept me flipping pages, that and the angst for the children's safety. I got a little bogged down in the mysticism but that's just me. I had a problem with Like Water for Chocolate too. In the end I realized what a brilliant vehicle the mysticism was to include the history of the Southern Negro, the unrelenting poverty and the intentional cruelty, without being heavy handed, almost like brush strokes. I finished this last night and found myself still thinking about it in bed, pairing the loss of dignity and helplessness of the past with today's meth epidemic, which has eviscerated potential and hope for today's American Blacks in poverty.

I fell in love with Jojo, with his maturity and determination and with his love and care for his little sister, Kayla. So often when parents are addicts the children become the parents. Grandparents Pop and Mam love these kids and tried to raise them, to keep them safe, but meth is a mean and unreasonable siren call to the users, and as so often happens, the parents continually muddled things up. I was left with the question of what will happen when the old folks with the old ways are gone, who will lead the young generation? This book would provoke a lot of discussion for a book club.

Despite being a page-turner - i.e. making me read because I wanted to learn what happens next and where the author takes the plot and characters, this book did not impress.

I kept thinking that I am most certainly missing something, I was sure there is some deeper meaning and layer I don't get, some symbolism or metaphors I can't grasp.

Honestly, this novel is not very original. Mothers and fathers who love their partner and addictions more than their children, grandparents looking after their grandchildren, children who are more mature than their age - all these bits of drama and hardship you can see in other books as well, dealing or not with the problem of race.

This is the kind of book that I am sure makes perfect sense to the author when written, but not to me as a reader. I found it to be forced, as if the author tried too much to make is deep and gripping, trying to make it sound poetic. Such an example would be (sorry, spoiler ahead) when Mam was dying, with Given and Richie present, and there were alternating voices. It was too much for something that in the end didn't take or lead anywhere.

If I understood it correctly, this novel wants to be truthful to life in the South, to show the cruelty towards people of colour. If this wants to be an authentic presentation, although fictional and literary, why the voices of plants and animals, why the ghosts? All these elements distracted from the severity of what African-Americans in US endured. Thinking back on this, all these horrible things were mostly hinted to, as if an afterthought because it was mandatory: imprisoning, bloodhound, injustice for the people of colour. It seemed as if there were two distinctive parts, with little to make them merge smoothly: Leonie's, Jojo's, and their family's drama, and Richie and Rev's and their past secret. I A too large part was occupied by Leonie and her thoughts. I was more interested in Jojo's voice, and even Rev and Richie's.

It is a fast read, but besides being compelling, I didn't find it very impressive. However, maybe this is just not for me.

I receive a free e-book copy of the book from the publisher via Net Galley. All thoughts expressed here are my own.

Heartbreaking and visceral, Sing, Unburied, Sing is an emotional journey, deep into the South and the roots tangled and burrowing down. This story is a melancholy cacophony of lamentations underneath the simple story of a thirteen-year-old boy and his dysfunctional parents, covering a rather short period of time with the main narrative. This story reaches inside, grabs hold, and pulls you along for its tragic journey.

Ward's writing is a soothing comfort of symphonic words for most of the book. Other books, delivering this amount of prose-laden narration, simply push too far and get swallowed up—increasingly verbose, waxing poetic. Southern books can often fall into that trap of featuring so much atmosphere that they drown in their own oceans of metaphors, similes, and lyrical and heady language, but Sing, Unburied, Sing, beautifully sad and inherently Southern, manages to keep its head above water.

The author gives the readers a poignant story, undoubtedly well written and fraught with intense highly emotional moments. There are several narrators to the story but the one character that stands out is JoJo, a youth who resides with his grandparents, baby sister and a drug addict mother when the work begins. As more of the story comes to light, we find JoJo trying to cope with death, parents who aren't responsible, protecting sister and uncovering the truth of his grandfather's past. With a touch of the paranormal and a dash of Voodoo we are given a read that well deserves the National Book Award for Fiction 2017. I highly recommend this novel.

This was a tough read, painful, made more so as it is told primarily through the eyes of a boy a bit too young to be becoming a man just yet. A necessary read, as it connects the racism of the past with the racism of the present, and how its current manifestations are as violent now as ever. After reading this book, it will be difficult for the reader to dismiss the generational effects of racism, and to ignore how the brutality of the past and the inhumanity of the present are all a part of the same thing. I read this in Houston during Hurricane Harvey; on the one hand, this was too emotionally-intense during such a catastrophe; on the other hand, nothing less emotional and powerful and beautiful would have had enough gravitas at such a time. I couldn't help thinking of Toni Morrison's Beloved as I read this, as I haven't read any other books where the spirit of a child who died wrongly and violently were such realistic and necessary characters. One of the greatest gifts of this writing is how it forces the reader to challenge our tendency to judge someone based on the way they deal with life, without bothering to consider why they are dealing with it in such a destructive way.

OH BOY, what to say - Emotional....Sad....Disheartening....Infuriating....AND a Great Read!

SING UNBURIED SING is a multi-layered, beautifully written story about a dysfunctional family who live on a farm near the Gulf of Mississippi.

THE CHARACTERS are very well-defined and unforgettable.....like the self-absorbed drug addicted Leonie who "ain't got the mothering instinct".....like Michael, the father...who "ain't" much better...undependable...even when he's not in prison.

POOR MAM, she's bedridden; POP watches over her and his two bi-racial grandchildren, but OMG! lives with a haunting and heartbreaking memory.

AND THEN there's JoJo...only thirteen, but clearly stands out among ALL the rest giving baby sister Kayla love and protection from neglect, stupidity and evil.

AND...OH. MY. GOSH. The road trip to the State Penitentiary!

MANY of the incidents in this novel are pretty tough to take. (including one with a farm animal). There are also ghosts about and visions from the past, but thankfully, in the spirited end, there is hope and singing from a special little voice.

I’ve read Jesmyn Ward’s nonfiction so when I saw that she had a new novel releasing, I was intrigued. Ward’s writing continues to be beautiful and engaging and her latest novel was definitely no different.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is difficult to describe. It’s about the South, Mississippi specifically, and one family’s journey. It’s about Jojo, a teen who wants to be like his grandfather and who wants to protect his little sister. It’s about Leonie, a mother who’s haunted by visions of her dead brother. It’s about Pop, a farmer who’s trying to teach his grandson how to be a good person. It’s also about Parchman, a State Penitentiary that haunts this family both in the past and the present. Ward manages to connect so many different characters, POVs and time periods in a seamless way that is just extraordinary.

I’m not sure what much there is to say because this novel is truly as phenomenal as it sounds. It’s brilliant and so well-written but definitely hard to describe. You’ll fall in love with the characters and definitely feel their pain and their sorrow. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a beautiful and emotional book and I promise you will not regret reading it.

This book will easily be one of my favorite reads of 2017. I finished it nearly a week ago and I still feel inadequate to write a review that will do it justice. The plot has already been described by other reviewers, so I won't repeat it here.

This is a gritty and heartbreaking story, with writing so beautiful, a setting so real, and characters so well-developed, that I was completely immersed in the story from the beginning. My heart broke again and again for the people, alive and dead, who inhabit these pages.

I’m not normally a fan of the magical realism of "ghosts", but in this case it works, and the ending - oh my, that ending - brought it all together so it made sense why it was included. Although the synopsis sounds unrelentingly sad and grim, with bad things heaped upon yet more bad things, it was never gratuitous. These are fictional characters, but there are real people who live this reality: the racism, poverty, drug addiction, injustice, abuse. But the story is also one about love and hope. There are characters who angered and disgusted me, but then there are characters like JoJo, Mam, and Pop who bring love and hope to these pages, and restores faith in humanity.
** I received my copy via Netgalley

I have never read a Jesmyn Ward book before this one. I've always intended to, but never quite gotten around to it, so I was really happy when I was approved for this one through Netgalley. Sing, Unburied, Sing has a lot going on, and I really appreciated Ward's writing style, prose, and the perceptions her characters brought to their stories. The book follows Leonie and Jojo, a mother and son with a strained existence on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Jojo and his younger sister Kayla live with their grandparents on a farm, with occasional drop-ins of Leonie, their drug-addicted mother. They're all dealing with a lot: Leonie sees visions of her dead brother when she's high, Mam (the grandmother) is dying of cancer, and Jojo is grappling with his lack of relationship to his mother, as well as becoming a teenager in an uncertain time. When Jojo and Kayla's white father is set to be released from prison, Leonie takes them and her best friend with her to pick him up from the state penitentiary, and their journey is the focal point of the novel. 
I'm not even sure where to begin with my review, because there is a lot to chew on here.  From Jojo, who can't stand his mother and is more of a parent to Kayla than Leonie is, to Pop, who was raised in Mississippi among the "good ole'" white boys who didn't blink at killing a brown child, to Leonie, who really seems to want to be a good parent, the characters are each compelling and damaged in their own ways. Their relationships and intersections across gender and generation are interesting to read about. Pop and Jojo are obviously close, and that leads to Pop sharing stories of his time in jail when younger, though not always telling the whole story. Pop also worries about Leonie's relationship to her children, but he's rather taciturn and their relationship obviously has its ups and downs. The story flits between the perspectives of Jojo and Leonie, showing their relationship from both angles. Jojo is a likable protagonist, and easy to empathize with. Leonie, on the other hand, isn't really likable, but as you learn her story, you can somewhat understand her, even if you can't condone her actions. 

The prose in the novel is well written. The writing style really drives aspects of the story home, including the many issues of race at play here. There's historical race issues from Pop's past, and there are the issues driving Leonie's relationship to Michael, her children's father, who is white and whose family refuses to acknowledge the children's existence. The layers of racism and identity prevalent in the story are not easy to read, but are necessary and Ward does a very good job of tackling them head-on and without pulling her punches. While the story doesn't necessarily have what I would consider a definitive ending, the point of this novel is the journey of the characters in it, and it's okay to now know, as life is uncertain.

This novel is hard for me to say I enjoyed it. It was a difficult read, but also a read that was hard for me to put down. It gave me a lot to think about, and a lot of perspectives to consider. While not all the characters are likable, they're all human and very well developed. Their lives play out issues that our country is still struggling with today, even outside of the Deep South. I read it very quickly, but know I'll likely also go back to sit with it a little more on a re-read. It's very timely and important and I highly recommend it.

Note: I received this book from Netgalley & the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Hi all!

This is book review 5/48 for the year, and 5/24 specifically for fiction. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars!

Title: "Sing, Unburied, Sing" by Jesmyn Ward

Genre: Literary fiction, suspense

Book in a nutshell without spoilers:

This book centers around a boy who is coming-of-age while his family is falling apart. I loved how the author created so many realistic and haunting experiences and how she also explored the sensitive and emotional topics in the story. Reading this book reminded me of how many unknown tragedies took place in the early 1940's to 1960's for poor, black Americans. It also made me think about how many times we are haunted by decisions made in our youth. Overall this book was a great read! I encourage everyone to pick it up and read it!

Peace, blessings and happy reading! Until next time... CM

This heartbreaking story well-deserves the National Book Award. For those of us who live in a nice safe environment surrounded by people who care about us, this is a wake-up call to how lucky we are. If you are poor, bi-racial, with a drug-addicted mother and father who is in prison, your life in rural Mississippi is challenging, This is a deeply emotional book in which family still plays a strong part. It is West’s ability to choose her words carefully to paint a strong, true picture of a life of despair that makes this book soak into the reader’s mind long after the book has been read.

I read this novel in one sitting. I liked the way the author presented the story, and then used the telling another story within the main story to present background and insight for the grandfather's character. As I read the final pages of the novel, I finally understood the title the author chose for her book. This book won the National Book Award for Fiction of 2017, and I had looked forward to reading it; it is different from what I usually read, but I thought it was gave good insight into the life of an African American family in a small community in rural Mississippi where prejudice was very evident.

This novel. With tones of Toni Morrison delicately overlapping the racial divide of Americana, you would think that this book is an account of nothing newer than the early 1960's. The narrative captures some of Faulkner. This is no ordinary writer. Extraordinary writers win awards. This won the National Book Award.

But, there are hints of modern world. The black children driving with their mother to pick up their convict father, are picking up their white father. This book occurs after Hurricane Katrina – when the huts along Mississippi still have rot and mildew and disrepair for sheltering the poor. Now, to make this even more idiosyncratic, the mother of these children had a heroic-athletic-bright-full-of-future brother who is killed in cold blood by her husband’s cousin. Tensions do exist, but not necessarily because of that.

The patois spoken by the characters is great. The encounters with the police by this mixed race couple is beyond horrible. Again, the author curls you. They are stopped, and the police find nothing wrong, but handcuff children and make a living hell out of the proceeding. But, in the end, the police were correct for all of the wrong reasons. Were the police good? Were the citizens violated. Did the citizens get what they asked for? Do bad things happen to bad people?

To these questions, and more, there are not exact answers. And, to books like these, such questions are posed in a beautifully drawn literary scene of colorful characters who can be loved or hated for the same reasons that the questions are not answered.

4.5 Stars

This was the second book this week I've read that took place in a backward town that hasn't quite caught up to the 21st Century. And, like the other one, I loved this one.

Jojo is a great character who does a lot of the narrating of his story in this book. He's such a sweet child and the responsibilities placed on him at such a young age are horrendous!

Leonie is Jojo's mother, when she wants to be. She's a very selfish person, loves meth and will let her kids go days without eating.

During the trip to the prison to pick up Jojo's dad I wanted to crawl into this book and just squeeze the crap out of Leonie's neck. Well, maybe just slap her around a few times and show her some sense. Ha!

A sad, beautiful story that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Thanks to Scribner and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Sing Unburied Sing, Jesmyn Ward. Author, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chris Chalk, Rutina Wesley, narrators
This book is very hard to read; aside from the fact that the subject matter is current, as well as historic, it is also about the horrific brutality, that was and still is, often inflicted upon a people, regardless of their guilt or innocence; this behavior is unjustified regardless of the innocence or guilt, color, creed, nationality, religion or any other defining aspect of that victim. No behavior on the part of anyone can justify the unimaginable punishments meted out; the mutilation, the torture or even merely the humiliation of another, should not be tolerated by society, but in an advanced society, this criminal behavior of those in power seems much more egregious.
This book is an intense examination of the racial situation and the victimization they experience in their ordinary daily lives. Avoiding the injustice perpetrated upon them is almost impossible since it is rained down upon them according to the whims of the angry mob mentality of their abusers. It is not, however, I believe, because of white supremacy, a catch term that has taken hold as a rallying cry. Rather, to me, it is because there are simply hateful people with evil in their hearts who will justify their despicable behavior with any excuse they can muster up that will gain the support of other likeminded despicable creatures. This behavior is often obvious on both sides of any conflict, none is defensible.
Each chapter of this book presents the voice of one of the three major characters, Leonie, Jojo and Richie. Most of the dialogue takes place as Leonie drives her friend Misty and her two children, to pick up Michael, their father, from Parchman prison, as he has served out his sentence. On that ride, black life is very fully presented in view of their behavior and approach to life, and the behavior of others in the world toward them. Each of them, in their own way, is a victim of society’s injustice and the injustice of their own cultural environment. Each has to fight a system that overpowers them, that does not provide them with the tools they need to achieve parity.
As the book explores the history and lifestyle of its characters, it uses the dialogue between them, coupled with their individual thoughts and memories, to highlight the injustices that they have had to suffer, and even ignore, to avoid further retaliation. They were often in a position of vulnerability that allowed no bridge to justice. Although it is not specifically addressed in this book, it is this backward and forward looking at the situation that they faced that allows the reader to understand the anger that is boiling over in today’s society, even if they disagree with the methods now being used by some of those who are angry, since they justify their own brutality in ways not very different from the justification of abusive power used by their “enemies”. Those without power often seek not justice, but to overpower those in power to assume the same mantle of superiority, rather than equality.
I listened to the book and thought it might be better to have read it in print. Although the book was read well by several readers, to delineate the characters, I thought some portrayals were a bit excessive. At times, Leonie seemed too sultry and Jojo’s speech pattern, too stereotyped in its presentation. Richie was alternately portrayed as a young boy and as a man, in his tone of voice, perhaps to emphasize the passage of time. There was no way, however, to find any fault in the prose of this author; it is so far superior to that in many books written today. The choice of vocabulary and the way in which the words were combined made for an eloquent and often poetic presentation, painting pictures and images for the reader to see in their mind’s eye, sometimes making some of the scenes almost too horrific to imagine. The influence of the fear and often shame that constantly haunted the life of the victims, created hopelessness and an “underground” lifestyle. Norms in their world were often at odds with the norms in the world of others.
Throughout history, groups that have been abused by the prejudices of others have been blamed for bringing this abuse upon themselves because of their own behavior. If nothing else, this book will disabuse the reader of that fact. Nothing justifies the brutality or bigotry that the people of color have had to deal with because nothing makes brutal behavior toward anyone acceptable. No behavior on anyone’s part, no biological aspect of anyone’s body or cultural and religious choice makes cruelty toward anyone acceptable, in my opinion. While it may be impossible to prevent the expression of opinions, there is a proper and improper way to express those opinions. No behavior that threatens another should be acceptable. No behavior that intimidates another should be applauded. Everyone, I believe, has a responsibility to behave in an acceptable manner, at all times, without bringing harm to another, except in cases of unavoidable war to prevent just that kind of inhumane behavior, but we must be fully aware of the fact, that, that makes us guilty of being “the pot calling the kettle black”.
At the end of the book, while I felt I had really learned a great deal about society’s mistreatment of others, specifically, in this book, of those of color, but universally, as well, of all people who are powerless, I did not feel that there was any viable solution offered to make things more tolerable, to right the wrongs of racial injustice, or to bring back a return or an insurgence of common decency. Just as some of the characters were haunted by visions, so our society was and still is haunted by unjustified feelings of hate. Also, while the idea of the injustice and horrific prejudice and hateful behavior toward a group of people was excellently and honestly rendered, I wasn’t certain that the expectation of responsible behavior on the part of those victims was as fully explored. As both worlds were examined, however, the world of color and the world without, the bias and overt injustice experienced by those who were powerless were horrifying. It is a virulent disease spreading all over the world, as we witness, daily, the horrific violence inflicted upon populations that are weaker or less in favor then the one in power.
Regardless of the victim’s behavior, which is ridiculously, somehow supposed to justify the injustice, there is no acceptable excuse for any of the brutality or expressions of violence and hate that have become almost daily occurrences. Perhaps the haters have mastered the art of making this behavior so common that we have become inured to it and are beginning to accept it as normal rather than what it is, totally abnormal, a total aberration of the human condition and merely an expression of man’s inhumanity toward man.

The song in Jesmyn Ward’s novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, will break your heart. An ensemble of characters sing their part in a chorus of racism, drug addiction, poverty, incarceration, child neglect and love. Ward’s prose unveils places and people with perfect language and deep sentiment. A reader’s empathy builds on every page. Even the ghosts sing in this chorus because they remain attached to the people and places. This novel is on many of the best of the year lists and won the National Book Award for fiction.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

It's hard to explain this book, but it's hard to stop thinking about it now that I've finished reading it.

Essentially, it's about an African American family from Deep South Mississippi. We're dropped in as they're trying to take care of one another and themselves in the midst of some powerfully damaging forces: cancer is mounting a final offensive against the matriarch's ailing body, the patriarch must reckon with losing her (and all those he's lost before), their daughter wrestles with a meth addiction and having her white boyfriend in jail, and their grandson is coming to realize that he is more grown than his mother, that he's closer to being his father's sister than the father ever will. As the novel unfolds we find that the family is still being rent asunder from events that took place long before the book begins -- before some of the main characters are even born.

I found this book to be beautifully written. I loved how descriptive the author was in unexpected ways, and illustrated some frightfully complex feelings (even in scenes that you may not have comparable touchpoints for) in a way that made you immediately understand what the characters were going through. This all painted a luminous picture of how full of hurt and pain and yet love such a terrible situation can be. The way we learn about characters and their secrets felt natural and fitting, given that family history is often hidden in ways that hurt more than help. And, from a white woman's perspective, I found this book useful in reminding me of how not-that-far removed we are from the days of slavery and cruel Jim Crow; it grounds how that legacy can have lasting imprints, even generations on.

There's a touch of bayou mystery, too, so avoid if you can't stand any whisper of the supernatural.

A masterly written novel that reminded me of the history of race in the South, including deprivation, complex family relations and compromised feelings about life. This novel by Ms Ward never preaches, she does not raise her voice, but instead maintains a tone where the reader's feelings for the characters and events can be experienced at a uniquely personal level.

Profound questions are raised about life's meaning, where to find hope in despair, and how transcendence can be experienced amid challenges.

I loved reading this book for it's honest telling. An uncompromising stare into reality challenged my prejudices and made a clear space for personal growth. For me, it is unusual and welcomed to get such clarity in a complex yet entertaining tale.

Thank you Scribner for sending me an ARC to review.

Sing, Unburied, Sing was an interesting--and atypical--read for me. From the writing style to the storyline, this was way out of my reading comfort zone.

For its genre and style, I decided on four stars. It borders on a stream of consciousness writing style. This style made it interesting to get character's perspectives as they were happening and added a different dynamic to the story.

Admittedly, it was tough to get through the story. I often found myself wondering "what point are we trying to make?" but realized that was the wrong way to approach the novel. Overall, well done and unique. Ward writes in a very descriptive style and doesn't leave much out.

I'm listening to this book as I write ... among my tears (and I rarely cry [even at This Is Us]). It is among the most heartbreaking books of all time, but written so gloriously that I cannot bear to put it down. As a mother and grandmother, I yearn to reach out to JoJo and Kayla, to offer them solace and kindness. I want to grab Leonie by the shoulders and force her to see ... to connect to ... the lives of her neglected children. This powerlessness as an observer of their story, however, is what gives this novel its meat and commands that it be finished. It commands, too, that we acknowledge the "others" around us and treat them with compassion and respect so that this ugly racism currently strangling our country can recede into the distant past.

I read [book:Salvage the Bones|10846336] in 2012, after a friend recommended it. To put it mildly, I loved that book. So I was excited to hear Jesmyn Ward had a new one coming out. It seemed like a long time in between books. However, something I've noticed is some of the best writers take years in between books and it's usually worth the wait. This isn't to say that all writers who churn out books more frequently can't produce high quality novels. Some can. But in my experience, the books that worm their way into your heart the most tend to come from authors who aren't as prolific. Just an observation. This book was worth the wait.

It didn't capture me immediately like, "Salvage," did and in the middle it took a turn that I wasn't sure about. Instead, I slowly fell in love with some of the characters and felt sympathy for ones I was determined to dislike. And that turn in the middle? I ended up liking it.

JoJo and his sister Kayla live with their mother and their grandparents. It's really the grandparents raising them. Their mother Leonie is addicted to drugs, physically absent often and mentally absent always. Their father Michael is in jail. JoJo and Kayla depend on their love of each other and their love of grandparents, Mam and Pop to survive. Then Leonie gets a call that Michael is getting out of jail and she takes the kids and a friend on a road trip to pick him up.

The first voice you hear is JoJo's and because of this, I went in bound and determined to dislike Leonie. I should have known that Ward doesn't write one dimensional characters. Suddenly, the narrative is Leonie's and you see that there's more to her. I won't say that I ended up loving her. But I ended up knowing why she was the way she was and my heart hurt for her.

There's also another voice in this story. It was this voice that gave me pause and made me wonder if I liked the direction the book was going in. I realize I'm being vague but as usual, I try not to infuse my reviews with spoilers and I feel that by revealing the voice, I'll be spoiling something. Suffice to say, I fell for this voice too and the book was better for it.

"Sing, Unburied, Sing," has a dash of magical realism in it that, "Salvage the Bones," did not. If that's not your cup of tea, I still think you may enjoy this book as it doesn't take over the book but more compliments it.

Ward has written another powerful novel and I'll try to wait patiently for her to bestow us with another literary gift. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this review copy.

It was everything I thought it would be - heartbreaking and heavy - but it was also difficult to get through which is why I'm rating this book lower than I really had hoped.

I had seen Sing, Unburied, Sing praised over and over and over after gaining popularity last year. And while it fell outside of my usual realm of reads, it looked interesting enough that I picked it up. But even halfway through I caught myself feeling like I just couldn't get ahold of the tone. To be honest, I think it's the ghosts.

Maybe that makes me a party pooper because I know the ghosts are a big flippin deal, but the shift in voices just left me feeling uneasy and like I could never settle into this book. It was good - a great glimpse at how heavy life can be. But these things held me back from truly loving it.

What did I think?: Overall, I thought that was an enjoyable read. It took a lot of getting used to but eventually everything sort of comes together and makes sense. I could never figure out if I was supposed to like the characters or not which made this somewhat exhausting but overall it was entertaining and I would recommend it.

Who should read it? If you, like me, have been seeing this title float around followed by praise, perhaps it's time you see for yourself what all the hype is about. This is a hard one to recommend to any one or two types of people just because it feels like it sits in a category all by itself in terms of style. I say if you are even a little interested, give it a shot!

Sing, Unburied, Sing is an incredibly moving novel about life in small-town Mississippi where life is constantly inflicted by ravishing hurricanes, enduring poverty, rampant opioid availability, and racial prejudices.

The prose is eloquent and descriptive. The characters are tormented, fragile, and raw. And the plot takes us on a heart-wrenching rollercoaster ride full of love, violence, hatred, addiction, biracial tension, incarceration, abandonment, death, loss and the spirit world beyond.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is ultimately a poetic tale woven with a supernatural thread that reminds us that strength, compassion, and kindness is the base of humanity that transcends skin colour, socioeconomic status, and the deepest, darkest realities.

Overall, I found this a good read, but by the end of it I was bugged by a couple of things. It was not the magic realism that bothered me. I'm all for that sort of thing, and Ward handled it well and with restraint; what was more implausible to me than the existence of ghosts was how big and sophisticated the 13-year-old central character's vocabulary was (I don't know any 13-year-old kids who use 50-cent words like that). Also, I fault the novel because the boy's and his mother's narrative voices were basically indistinguishable from one another, except via the content of what they were saying. Lastly, yes, the writing is beautiful, but I would have liked the author to have used more restraint with regard to the use of similes and metaphors: they were just piling up all over the place, and by the end of the book I was anxious because I knew that almost every page was going to be heaped up with them. Less is more. The overabundance of similes took me out of the story.

The people you know and the actions you take (or don't) can haunt you throughout your life. Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing follows one family whose past haunts them and affects their present in an unforeseen way.

Jojo has been an independent and responsible child from an early age, helping to raise his toddler sister Kayla while taking his parental cues from his grandfather (Pop) and grandmother (Mam) instead of his mother Leonie who is unreliable, and seemingly uninterested in her children, and his father Michael who is in prison. Mam has an innate talent for herbal medicine and understanding what people need, but she's never had the ability to see the dead. Whenever Leonie gets high, she's able to see her deceased brother Given, which both comforts and frightens her, particularly now as Mam is slowly dying of cancer and would like nothing more than to see her son again. When Michael is released from prison, Leonie takes Jojo and Kayla on a journey to the prison, where her father once resided, to retrieve him, bringing the past back to life and sparking a momentous change in her children's lives.

Written with well-crafted prose, which felt out of character at times, the lives of Jojo, Leonie, and Richie are vibrantly depicted, weaving their narratives together into a larger, haunting whole. While there is a time period established in which the story takes place, much of the narrative seems to transcend time, which is both fascinating and disheartening, as it demonstrates that the same problems continue to plague society's attitudes, particularly as relating to family dynamics and racial prejudices. Despite being incorporated throughout the story, the presence of the ghosts that Jojo and Leonie interacted with was odd and I didn't feel it added as much as it distracted in its magical realism; it did illustrate the preoccupation that some have over those they've lost in life, but it felt a bit out of place in the overall narrative.

I will first say that this book isn’t for the slight of heart, it opens with a pretty gruesome and detailed description of a slaughter and dressing of a goat. The rest of the story contains a lot of things that may be triggers, especially relating to child abuse and drug use. That being said, I do think it is a story that so tragically is the reality of some very poor people in the South and one, that for me at least, has never been given much consideration. The pain and suffering these innocent children endure, that the BEAUTIFUL prose of Jesmyn Ward allows you as a reader to truly know and in my case cry for, is just tragic and needs awareness. After lots of thought, I have come to the conclusion that though it wasn’t an easy read, it was very engaging and more importantly one that I needed to read. I would suggest others to do the same.

Sing, Unburied, Sing details a harsh family dynamic, complicated with addiction, imprisonment, and mystical ability.

Following the tale of Jojo and his family, Ward's novel explores the nuanced relationship families share in the face of adversity, and during ordinary life as well. Jojo, his mother, and his little sister embark on a journey in order to retrieve Jojo's father from prison. However, the journey has a few twist and turns ahead for the family.

If you like magical realism, folklore, tales of family struggles, this book is for you.

This devastating books can be hard to read at times, for the subject matter is grim, yet the haunting story is unforgettable. It follows the story of thirteen year-old JoJo who accompanies his drug addicted mother to pick up his father, who’s being released from prison. JoJo’s father is white and his mother is black, and the novel depicts the intense racism and brutality that persists. The reader also learns the history of Parchman prison, where a twelve year-old African American boy could be sentenced to several years of hard manual labor for stealing food to feed his starving siblings. Yet despite its difficult subject matter, the characters and their story are gripping. Ward writes in raw and lyrical prose that lingered in my head long after I put the book down.

This is the third book of Ward's I've read. Two of them are National Book Award winners, including this one. The third is a memoir. She is an engaging storyteller, an excellent plotter, has no loose ends. Sing, Unburied, Sing is the story of one family touched by racism, poverty, drugs, and filled with love that makes the pain almost bearable. Members of this family are also in touch with their ability to see and/or hear the dead. The dead are very much alive in this book, where every character is fully developed and real.

Novel is ambitious, with punchy prose... both good things. The experience of reading it just lacks texture. Lots, and I mean lots, of descriptions of back rubs and sibling care And, while an original take on the presence of the past, the ghost-human relationships don't resonate enough with the story or what we otherwise know of the characters. In short, not enough of a pleasure, and not as rich as it might have been.

Raw, real, sad, heart-wrenching and beautifully written story of family love and parental indifference, and how drugs & grinding southern poverty takes a toll on that family. From the title, I should have realized that ghosts and the paranormal were involved, but I did not until part way through. The writing was amazing, reading the book was worth it just to experience that, but I did not like it as much as previous National Book Award Winners or another short-listed title from this year “The Leavers” or the YA National Award Winner: “Far From the Tree”.

This is the story of a black southern family suffering several traumas. The central item is that the aging matriarch is dying of cancer as the family group attempts to cope. A second story involves her daughter whose husband/boyfriend is getting out of prison and the families' journey to pick him up. Another thing that is unique about the novel is that there are spirits who are active in their lives. There is a connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead. A book that justly deserves the Pulitzer Prize that it garnered.

3.5 / 5 stars

Jojo and Kayla are siblings living with their grandparents. Their mother shows up at their home often but these kids are cared for by their elderly grandparents. When their father, Michael, is to be released from prison, their mother, Leonie, takes them on a road trip through contemporary Mississippi to pick him up. Leonie battles drug addiction. Jojo does his best to care for his young sister and himself during the trip while harboring ill-will towards his absent mother.

This is not a long story but a powerful one told in alternating points of view. This family is damaged in several ways. Mostly character driven, this is a book that will really take readers inside the lives of a modern family, for better or worse.

I found that I had to suspend my disbelieve for some of this story. Death and illness are addressed often, but the speaking to or seeing the dead is something that prevents me from falling in love with this book. The prose is strong, and I'm not surprise to find this on the 2017 Nation Book Award finalist list.

A painful story of loss, of love, of magical realism. Ms. Ward's skill at painting depth of character & the anguish experienced by poor Black people in the south tears me apart. As much as her stories touch me I face each book dreading the likelihood of what pain the characters will experience. It is her ability to deeply touch the reader that makes her a winning writer.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is an interesting novel filled with raw and complicated relationships. The novel deals with loss, addiction, family dynamics, and prejudice. The novel mixes reality and fantasy in a balanced and effective way. The magical realism blurs generational lines intertwining the experiences of the past and present. The shifting point of view allows the reader into the heads of many of the characters, providing a more intimate connection with each of them and allowing for more complex characterization. I would 100% recommend this book!

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is not your run of the mill literary novel.  It not only gives the reader a bird’s-eye view of what it’s like to be the child of a crystal meth addict, but also gives us insight into how the addict herself justifies her actions.  The book begins from the point of view of a young boy, Jojo, who has been forced to take on too much responsibility at the age of thirteen, because of his mother’s obsession with her imprisoned boyfriend (his father) and her hopeless addiction to drugs.  His younger sister, Kayla, seeks him when she is upset because he is her protector and sole caregiver. They live with their grandparents, but Jojo’s grandfather, while a loving figure in Jojo’s life, is the sole caretaker of his dying wife.
The book explores racial divides in Mississippi’s past and present. Jojo and Kayla live in the home of their black grandparents and are shunned by their white grandparents.   It delves into graphic descriptions of lynchings, prison beatings, etc… And what makes the book extremely unique is the spiritual presence as a result of those violent circumstances.
This is the first literary work I’ve read since A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (another great book!) and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It definitely deserves 5 stars!

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is easily the best book I read in 2017. I love everything she's written and this book doesn't disappoint. The story is brutal and beautiful; the writing is so lyrical I had to stop and read passages again and again to absorb them. It is no surprise that Ward has been awarded the National Book Award twice. This book is a masterpiece.

OK, I thought. ANOTHER story about a poor black Southern Mississippi kid with a drug add mother, filled with cliches. But this is not that book. It rises above the genre due to the author’s superb writing skill and a plot which holds your attention from page one to the ending.

I read this as a library book. Ward tells the story of a black family in Mississippi in spellbinding lyrical prose that doesn't miss a beat. It's sad and disheartening in its portrayal of Southern racism. Every word rings true. Like all great books, it gives a stark contrast between good and evil. This novel is a singular achievement. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Fascinating characters choosing to be in a mixed race relationship that undergoes the common culture pitfalls of their lives with various degrees of success because and often in spite of extrasensory perceptions many in their family have. At the heart of it all is Mam who heals with herbs and communes with dead loved ones.

National Book Award for Fiction and recent MacArthur Genius Award winner Jesmyn Ward explores family bonds and racial prejudice and oppression in Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel. Racism permeates the patch traversed by Jojo and his sister Kayla, his grandfather Pop and dying mother Mam, and his self-absorbed mother Leonie and his white father Michael, the pair not much older than children, and brings forth his murdered uncle Given, and another thirteen-year-old boy Richie, killed on the prison farm of Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary). Both Given and Richie, visible to Jojo, seek but can never find the release of justice, both stark and brutal reminders that post-racial America exists merely as a rhetorical phrase fronting a myth. As grim as this sounds, and as shocking as the family’s odyssey proves, Ward does find hope in the familial bonds of Jojo, Kayla, and Pop.

The story is about two journeys, one in real time and the other through recent history. Leonie solicits her white friend Misty, who has an imprisoned black boyfriend, to retrieve Michael from Parchman with her, where he has finished his term for cooking and selling meth. She thinks it’s a good idea to bring along her children, Kayla, a toddler, and Jojo, thirteen. As readers learn, she isn’t much of a mother, so bad and absent that her children can’t call her mom. She works but her passions are Michael, longing for Michael, and getting high. The burden of caring for the children fall to Pop and Mam, who now lies in bed, wracked by pain as she dies of cancer. Fortunately for Kayla and Jojo, Pop knows how to care for his family. As Jojo and Kayla share a special bond, so do Jojo and Pop. Pop teaches him how to live on the farm, the secrets of the woods and the animals, and of survival. He’s a man who has seen and experienced much pain in his life, including having served a term as a teen in Parchman. Slowly, over time, he tells Jojo the story of Richie, which is the tale of black oppression summed up in the short, brutal life of a thirteen-year-old boy. It’s a story Pop can barely finish, because, as readers will eventually learn, the ending is so horrifying.

Needless to say, the auto trip proves excruciating for the four, partly because Kayla becomes sick during it and nobody but Jojo seems to care or know how to comfort and help the child. When they eventually pick up Michael, the return trip devolves into something even more harrowing. Before getting Micheal, Leonie and Misty stop over at their lawyer’s house, Al. When you are dirt poor, as these people are, you get the Als of the world, representation by a drug addled wasted white man. He sends them off with crystal meth, and wouldn’t you know it, only hours out of prison, a cop pulls them over. Leonie, out love perhaps, desperation for certain, swallows the meth and what results nearly costs the travelers their freedom, and Jojo his life. It’s a scene straight out of a worst nightmare.

As if this wasn’t enough, Leonie possesses the ability envied by her mother, of seeing the dead. Perhaps this is supernatural, but it’s more likely the pain of losing her brother Given to murder. Suffice to say here that against all good advice, star athlete Given thought his white teammates regarded him as he regarded him, as brothers. In the end, his trust and misreading of race killed him as surely as the bullet. Let’s leave it for readers to discover the circumstances on their own. Leonie believes she sees him, voiceless, observing all her bad deeds. Jojo possesses this ability as well. It manifests when they pick up Michael from Parchman and Richie hitches a ride to find his old benefactor, Pop, whom he knows as River. What is little, perpetually a child Ritchie seeking? He’s wants the one person he felt ever acknowledged and cared about him. There’s much sadness here, but none sadder than Ritchie and what he represents.

While many will think, no, this isn’t a book for me, it, in fact, probably is a book for you, and especially for people who will never know about it. Because it is a story that needs telling and feeling on a visceral level, with the right among of openness to receive and acknowledge it. Strongly recommended.

I read this book courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A profoundly sad and moving novel that broke my heart a little. It endows its characters with humanity even while showing them at their worst and has both tremendous compassion and for their flaws and weaknesses as well as their pettiness and malice, shown without sentimental or cheap solutions. It never flinches from what it shows, and it does so using beautiful language, images with great staying power and thematic resonance.

(But what a terrible world it is that needs stories this sad to tell its truth.)

A deep-South, rural-struggle story that pulled me into the emotional powerhouse of a set of grandparents, a mixed-race marriage, two kids, teen and toddler, having a hard and un-fun childhood, and ghosts with trails of tales winding around the whole family. Transcendent in the end, it lifted me into the ether of the weave of the double world, the earth world and the bardo, and I so wished there could be a conversation between Jesmyn Ward and Eudora Welty.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of this novel for review.

Absolutely heartbreaking story of race, siblings, motherhood, addiction, death and those who speak to us after death. It ripped my heart out and made me cry for every child in this world living like Jojo and Kayla were. Essential but brutal read.

Not that good. It does a good job exploring themes of drug addiction and the dysfunctional effects on families. But it's just not that interesting. And the characters kind of suck. And the end doesn't really fit in or make sense, while the title also doesn't work that well. This book is way overhyped. So many better books out there.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book. I was sucked in by the blurb and it did not disappoint. It is original and engaging. The family is complicated and feels real. The characters are strong. Throw in that magical realism and you have something quite special. I am not completely sure it feels done but I could have much worse complaints.

This book was amazing. So well written, interesting, and poignant. The story dealt with a lot of pain, both in the past and in the present, but it left you with a lot of hope as well. The story and writing reminded me a lot of Toni Morrison. It reminded me that in some ways we all live with the ghosts of our pasts. This book will stay with me.

Jesmyn Ward writes poetry in prose. Within this remarkable novel, the reader is exposed to people, places and life styles which are probably unfamiliar to most. We are reminded of cruelties dealt out with impunity by those in power to the powerless. We are introduced to less than perfect people, who non the less deserve our understanding. This is one of the best novels I've read this year---let me amend that---it is the best one I've read in a long time.

What an outstanding book. I was so wrapped up in this book that there were times that I lost track of time. Wonderfully developed characters that draw you in. Yes, the book is tough to read but so worth it. Ghosts from the past, memories, etc are all inter-twined in this read. Please do yourself a favor and pick up this book,. You will not regret it. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

I stumbled into this story knowing the briefest about the subject and I am floored and broken by it. I am sad for the history that it incorporates. I am mad at the negligence that is fiction and fact all at once. I will be thinking about this book for a king time to come.

The beginning had the makings of a great story. I got confused and lost interest during the road trip when Leonie and the children go to pick up Michael from prison. It took way too long and the timeline did not match up with a drive to the Mississippi Delta from the Coast. I made myself finish, but some of it was too unrealistic to me.

I am blown away by Jesmyn Ward's talent. I have read Sing Unburied Sing, Men We Reaped and Salvage the Bones. Each is a punch to the gut as she traces the importance of family in lives with little else. Whether the scene in Salvage the Bones (spoiler alert) when Skeetah chooses his sister over China, the harsh ring of the phone to tell Jesmyn another young man close to her has died in Men We Reaped, or the surprisingly effective ghost of Ritchie in Sing Unburied Sing, the privileged among us have much to learn from these clos knit clans with little of material wealth. I love the pride that Jesmyn unknowingly evidences throughout her books. I love her way with words and phrases and descriptions. I felt similarly after reading Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. This young writer has it all. Read everything she writes ( just purchased Where the Line Bleeds).

Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing tells a riveting tale, complete with characters assuming unexpected, yet awe-inspiring roles and spiritual meanings beyond measure in the name of tradition. Perspectives of each character are given from the lens of their own consciences, which provides further depth to its overwhelmingly emotional tone.

Not one word is wasted. Every sentence is true, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Jojo and Kayla are gifted children who carry the whole world under their skin. The thread of history and tragedy, from slave patrols and prison brutality, to contemporary drug addiction and law enforcement, clearly runs through each page.

I will try to write this without spoilers.

This book was wonderful and I marvel at Ward’s command of characterizations. JoJo and his sister are like two halves of a whole...while he negotiates the bewildering forest of what it means to be a man, his baby sister careens about in the realm of (even feminine?) instincts informed. There is a sad naïveté to Leonie, their mother, and how Ward was able to convey her as a sympathetic character (which she does, as well, with JoJo’s father, Michael) seems miraculous to me.

As Faulkner so aptly put it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This is a novel that embodies everything that implies.

My first thought was that she writes like John Coltrane plays - toying and embellishing the melody, then, (near the end) when she is deeply moved, things get really interesting. There's a long section about the unburied singing, of course, when she goes off the rails in poetic, moving, strange, joyous, mercilessly sad, refrains of sheer inspired wailing wonder - at the whole history of blues in the life of the rural poor...striving for family, for love, for forgiveness - for home.

I did not wish the book to end. I wanted each word , each descriptive emotion to linger so I could feel this book, relate to this book, and remember the passages that gripped me. Yes, there is a storyline but it is not the driving force. Breath this book into your heart. Let it serve as a guide for feelings you have felt or are yet to come.

I admire and respect that Jesmyn Ward is an excellent talent with a unique lyrical writing style. Each sentence seems excessively worked over to provide maximum visual and emotional impact. So on a literary scale SING, UNBURIED, SING is a very interesting read.
The book is told in the first person by three different characters. The main character is a 13 year old boy, JOJO. He has a toddler sister who he cares for and who is sick through most of the book. JOJO’s mother Leonie is another narrator who seems ill equipped to handle her children, her parents, or her husband in prison and is also obsessed by the murder of her brother an event that haunts her memory. Leonie needs to pick up her husband who is being released early from prison. She takes JOJO and his sister and picks up a friend and her employer. They drive to an upstate Mississippi and it’s this trip to an upstate Mississippi prison that provides much of the story.
The third narrator is Richie who as a 12 year old was a prisoner serving time with JOJOs black Grandfather POPs. Richie tells JOJO his back story and his relationship with POPs while in prison throughout the book. It is this story that I felt delivered the biggest impact at books end.
The story features some interesting racial threads as JOJO’s father Michael is white who Grandparents is take a dim view of Michael having married a black woman. Michael’s parents disown and ignore their grandchildren. This while Leonie’s parents are black and POPs becomes a role model for JOJO and the Grandmother is dying from cancer. So there you have the basic nuts and bolts of the story. I have kept some secrets so as not to impact your reading of the book.
My frustration with the book is mainly that the three first person narrators seem to observe and speak through the same voice. Although the book focuses on JOJO I never felt for a minute that he as a 13 year old was telling his own story. I felt the lyrical and often poetic style of Ward’s writing style gets in the way of individualizing each character’s narration. For many readers this may not be an issue as they might be swept away by the use and style of the book’s language. For me the book tries too hard to be literary. A matter of taste and expectations I suppose.

Detailed, thoughtful, and thought-provoking writing. The smells and sights, the references to what we think we know about death and time from different perspectives, the characterization - all of it left me wondering how someone can be this perfect and careful within her craft. Inspiring.

I didn't know what to expect when I picked up "Sing, Unburied, Sing." I had no previous knowledge of the author or her writing style. That said, I was able to fall in love with author and National Award Winner Jesmyn Ward's latest novel from word one.

Some may say she plays into the stereotypes of Mississippi poverty, but I see the struggling characters as realistic. Death, poverty, drugs and dysfunction are real, yet Ward takes readers beyond that to see the depth of a family, especially a young boy named JoJo, struggling to survive. And it's not just the living who struggle. Those beyond reality hear the power of a home song, the song that lives on in the heart. It's the song of peace, protection and redemption.

"Sing, Unburied, Sing" hits at the heart, and it has a strong grip.

ARC provided by NetGalley

This book is so well written it reminds me just how bad a lot of books I read are. So many textures, sights, smells. The author places you right in the atmosphere where you can basically taste the air. This helped me to feel the sadness these characters feel as a result of their horrific histories, things I could never otherwise relate to.

I was crying throughout from the sheer poetry of the language and at the end because of how she managed to end it with hope and beauty. I'm going back and reading all her previous titles now. She will be unseating an old white guy in the very exclusive group that is "my favorite authors." Bravo, Jesmyn Ward!

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.
- from One Writer's Beginnings, by Eudora Welty

With her story of Jojo's family, Ward writes a small family story which mirrors the bigger American story out there. The American story that bred Parchman, the Mississippi State Penitentiary and the systems that continued slavery without the official title. We get unacknowledged ghosts who cannot lay down and rest before their pain is acknowledged, tasted and digested. We get how to be together, like Pop and Big Joseph, or like Leonie and Michael. The thing is: any people who share space have to learn to live together, to not dirty the pool they drink from. Figuring how is the great battle. Cannot be done without an open heart and an open mind. The past cannot be got rid of at the snap of a figure just by forgetting. Like Ward's story itself, all this is a journey which needs to be taken so that everything climbs up on board, the past, the hurt, the present, repentance, forgiveness and hopes for the future.

So how Ward dealt with time is very apt. Time here is rather shady. Time settings can be deciphered only through peripherals like Leonie's car or mobile. I felt this to be in line with how Ward dealt with time in the story. How things have remained the same regardless of time passing, we see this more and more when we read Richie's story.

Leonie and Michael's inconsistent parenting parallels the inconsistent leadership and society which shillyshallies about trying not to see. But still Leonie and Michael have to find a way forward regardless of their perilous path because together is the only way forward.

This was my first fiction by Jesmyn Ward after reading her The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race

Slice of life; coming of age story. Characters are true to themselves. Held my interest. I’d recommend to anyone interested in a thought-provoking story of a black boy’s life in the scary, brutal south.

I picked this book up knowing nothing about it but because it won national book award. It was wonderful. Beautifully written wonderful characters about a slice of life I will never experience. So pertinent to the times we are living in where our country sadly hold onto a refusal to acknowledge the experience of African Americans in our society. I loved this book and look forward to reading other books by the Author. Mary beier

Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner; 2017) by Jesmyn Ward tells the story of young Jojo, his mother Leonie, and the rest of the family (some of them dead, some of them alive, all of them oppressed) living in rural Mississippi. We're drawn in with a language that's as revealing from its multi-layers and colors as any story you've heard—written in an almost oral tradition. It's easy to see the downward spin of folk who seem to have no chance at redemption as the blues and bad news continues to pile on.

Having the characters speak for themselves in alternating chapters works here and will keep you tied to the drama; but I can't help but wonder how the ways the novel might have changed with a singular narrator. At times, the youngest and oldest folk seem to share eloquent insights at similar levels, when there's little chance of that actually happening. In other words, we hear our author's voice through the whole tale. But what a picture she paints. We all know families in poverty stuck in a mucky pool like this, and yet because part of the problem is self-imposed and the other part is imposed-upon, there often seems to be this strain of injustice that continues to prevent improvement. An empathetic read.
— Tom Field

I was doing all right with this one until the ghosts showed up. Just not a fan. Nor am I a fan of violent, irresponsible people who have children and then don’t take care of them. What’s Leonie’s excuse? It seems she made a great deal of her own trouble.

SING, UNBURIED, SING is a portrait of a Southern family in Mississippi. What makes the novel a standout are the rich portrayals of the main characters against a backdrop of racial injustice and hate. After reading the novel, you'll know what it feels like to walk in their shoes. An excellent read!

This book pulled on the sadness in my heart with its poetic depiction of the poverty and prejudice of the small, rural south world that the characters live and so many others. If reading, it takes you a while to get into the rhythm of the book, keep trying.

...in a good way. One of the rare times an award winner is deserving in my opinion even though some may consider the story depressing with prison, addicts, tragic characters, poverty. Still the colorful writing kept the book engaging for me.

OMG :-O This book is so good! This is pretty far from the psychological thrillers I normally read. I dont even remember now how I originally came across it.
But what a totally completely wonderful book!
On my way now to find more from this author.

My favorite books are the ones in which I lose myself and feel and see something new. This is one of those books for me. I started it one afternoon and finished it late, late that night. This is Jesmyn Ward’s best work to date, and she picks up the mantle of the best black novelists.

This book is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. The characters are so vivid and the plot is moving and emotional. As a literature major, I have read extensively, and I am pretty critical of a lot of fiction, but this novel moved me to tears. I plan on reading all the other work by Jesmyn Ward. The American South, where the novel is set, has always fascinated me. It is a country unto its own.

I've read all of Jesmyn Ward's books and the greatness of her writing continues in Sing, Unburied, Sing. The mood, the tone, the mysticism and realism she brings to the stories of poor rural Southerners and their racial dynamics continues in this latest novel. It is another unforgettable read! I see clearly why she won a MacArthur Foundation fellow award.

Astoundingly good. Couldn't put it down. I have 3 young children & I found myself reading it while riding in the car, at the dinner table, while they were getting baths; any time I could read at least 2 words, I'd pick this up. Easily one of my favorite books I've ever read.

It was one of those beautifully written books that I hated to see end. Because of the depth, richness, and poetic nature of her writing I became totally engrossed in the story and the characters. Reading it has been a mind, body, spirit experience.

Jesmyn Ward is an incredible writer. She has a style that I have never come across before, she writes like a poet. I didn't like this novel as much as I did Savage the Bones but this was good in it's own way. I can't wait to read what she writes in the future.

2.5 stars
I want very much to say i enjoyed reading this book. But I didn't. It was kiind of monotonous. I understand the idea of telling the story using the characters in the book, but it loses the point when it's so hard to differentiate their voices; to tell who's the narrator when they all sound so similar. Hardly felt their pain and loss and struggles. I find Jojo's voice was the most convincing and his relationship with his sister Kayla.

And there was no meat. Too little was dedicated to the title of the story. I hardly felt the build up. I also find there were many unnecessary words and descriptions that were repetitive and served no purpose.

I just can't connect to the story. Maybe it's just not my cup of tea.

I wish I could give it an extra star... Beautifully written, lyrical, great ghost story. For me, it reads like a Shakespeare play set in Mississippi.
Not an unnecessary word, and complex characters with flawless character POV. One of my favorites.

This isn't the type of book that I normally read, so it was a challenge for me to get into the story. However, as the story progressed and I began to understand the struggles of the characters, I became more invested . . . and I ended up truly enjoying the book.

I put it down several times and picked it up several times because it got such great reviews. I was bored, tired of puking and still not near the end. I will hang in there and finish it, but despite some good writing, the story is dull, dull, dull and the characters haven't got a lot going for them. Too confusing with the ghosts.

This is the worse book I have ever read. It was difficult to read. It bored me for 150 pages spent on a drive to pick up boyfriend from prison. It was a waste of my time when there are so many great books out there to read. I read this because it was chosen by by book club. So, if you like reading about methanphetamine addicts who neglect there children, vomit, and ghosts, go ahead. I now know to review books before selecting my book club commitments.

This book is a poignant tale of the imprint of trauma through the generations as told through one family. The love, hate, loss, disappointment, injustice and guilt are real and I read with a knot in my throat as I ended each chapter. The characters are genuine and Ms. Ward weaves does a great job of what could have been botched -- narrating from a ghosts perspective. Love, love, love. Can't wait to read more of her books now that I've discovered her.

I read this book because I had signed up for a program that the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke is doing with the incoming freshman class, which was assigned this book as their group read. Had I not committed to going to an event where the students and members of OLLI at Duke will discuss the book, I never would have finished the book. Magical realism can be made to work, but it doesn't work here. And rarely have I wanted to slap a character harder than I do Leonie. The "family road trip" she takes with her children and her druggie friend Misty to pick up the children's father from prison is excruciating to read. I can't for the life of me figure out why this is being called great literature.

Well written. The words of the characters, Richie, JoJo, Leonie were not authentic of the description of the characters but rather seemed that of the author forcing "prose" where it was not needed. Otherwise intensely described characters living extremely depressing lives. Only got revealing in the last chapter. Too much "throwing up" and "nuzzling."

Painful to read. Not an enjoyable read. Perhaps the most overrated book I’ve read lately. The abuse and neglect of children in the book was something I could not find enjoyable. To each his own but this is not my cup of tea!

I was excited to read this book, given the glowing accolades it had received, but I found myself more admiring of the author's excellent craftsmanship than truly losing myself in the characters, until the final act. I particularly enjoyed the elements of magical realism, and overall I think Jesmyn Ward is an important voice in contemporary literature.

What I Liked

Important themes. The topics confronted by Sing Unburied Sing are heavy and significant, including racial discrimination, violence and segregation, drug abuse, the perpetuation of economic inequality and the ways in which society fails to support the family. I can see why this novel would be selected as a National Book Award winner, because it touches on so much that is at issue with American life today when it comes to racial bias and inequality – realities that are finally finding more space and popularity in literature today, however belatedly so. I don’t want to take away from the importance of these themes despite my ultimate feeling that the novel did not live up to my expectations based on the accolades it has received thus far.

Beautiful writing. It’s always strange to realize that you didn’t really love a book that was nonetheless beautifully written. Jesmyn Ward has a gift for storytelling and I found many of the passages – especially the ones in which she described natural settings or interactions between Jojo and Pop or between Jojo and Leonie particularly poignant. I liked how she tied the ordinary to the overarching themes of her novel, connecting commonplace things like domestic routines or small gestures made by her characters to the greater narrative she builds about humanity as a whole. I think there’s a difference, however, between writing that is aesthetically pleasing and writing that truly breaks new ground in terms of the parallels it draws or the ways in which it addresses universal themes.

What I Didn't Like

Lack of subtlety. I think this was really my main issue with the novel. In truly great writing, in addition to beauty, there’s a depth and intricacy to the way in which an author portrays his or her themes. These themes are hidden between the characters’ thoughts and actions, within the settings and underneath the plot itself, rather than out in the open, waving their hands around to be noticed. I felt that Ward’s writing lacked this complexity – her themes are as obvious as obvious can be, slapping you in the face with their presence and all but spelled out in actual text. There’s a lack of artistry in this that I just couldn’t get past. I suppose it could have been a specific choice on the part of the author, but it’s so much harder to interweave themes less plainly into a story that I couldn’t help but lower my opinion of Ward’s novel as a result.

Magical realism felt thrown in. Without revealing too much, I had no idea there were ghosts in this novel or any magical realism for that matter. I have no issue with magical realism per se, but it has to be well-executed. In Sing Unburied Sing the magical realism seems thrown in to make up for other shortcomings, filling missing gaps in complexity for some of the characters or fallow portions of plot. There’s also little to no follow-through to some of the plotlines that get introduced with regards to the characters’ purported magical abilities. Little is explained and almost nothing is resolved by the end of the book. Unfortunately the peppered ghosts and magical rituals felt gimmicky, gratuitous and superfluous. I found myself wishing they had been substituted by greater depth in the real life, actual human connections between present and past, good and evil and right and wrong that the author was attempting to draw.

Final Verdict

A novel that addresses important themes of racial discrimination and social inequality and that has received significant accolades, but which I unfortunately found lacking in depth of writing.

This book is wonderfully written, like poetry! It is a tragic story, difficult at times to hear. The narrators of the audible edition are Fantastic!, a joy to hear their voices, kept me engaged and added characters to the story. Thank you!

"Sing, Unburied, Sing" is a well written yet decidedly strange book. Consider it a road novel involving ghosts and a very dysfunctional black family from Mississippi. There are very touching and tragic elements to it. It seems all the characters are hurting. Yet despite the clear literary talents of the author I found the overall feel to be of a sad soap opera rather than anything compelling.

Bottom line: strange, somewhat enjoyable but I don't know why people are raving about it.

An amazing work of beauty, poetry, nature, and love. This is a story about a family. Ward uses her main characters to narrate a chapter at a time which helps the reader understand these characters better. There are supernatural and painful elements in the story but this book reads like a dream. An essential read.

Sing, Unburied, Sing was a beautifully written book that tells the story of a somewhat broken family. Leonie is the mother of JoJo and Kayla, but she does not have a very maternal instinct and is pushing her children away albeit unconsciously. Leonie is focused primaruly on herself and her boyfriend, Michael, who is just getting released from prison. Michael is JoJo and Kayla's dad, but has been in prison for a large part of their childhood.

The interacial family lives in Louisiana and very much believe in Black Magic and beilieve that they have a "gift" for seeing the dead. Leonie often sees her brother, Given, who was killed as a young adult, but usually only when she is high. JoJo, however, sees a boy named Richie that knew JoJo's grandfather and wants him to help him "cross over".

Leonie's mother, Philomena, also sees people, but she is dying of cancer throughout the book.

I feel like my review of the book is somewhat disjointed and maybe that is because I didn't really connect with the characters a lot. I disliked Leonie and her boyfriend. I didn't care for how disconnected they were to their own children. I did like JoJo and the relationship he had with his sister which was more of a father, but I mostly just felt bad for them. The grandparents seemed to be a lot better than their daughter, but then something is revealed later in the book that clouded by judgement of the grandfather in particular.

As I mentioned at the top, I do feel it was a beautifully written book, but it just wasn't for me. Maybe it's because I am a mom or maybe it is because I just finished another dark tale before this one, but I am ready to read something uplifting now.

Jesmyn Ward is a great author, but I wasn't in love with this novel. I felt like it was written for white people. Concerning the audiobook, Jojo's character was occasionally a bit muffled, so I found myself rewinding or even looking at my physical copy more often than I'd like to. Additionally, given the nature of the plot, it's a little difficult to follow on audiobook. This is one I'd recommend buying the physical copy of.

4.5 stars. I enjoyed the family dynamic. This story contained a bit of mystery as well. I recommend it. The only thing I disliked was each chapter was from a different POV and sometimes it caused confusion.

Jesmyn Ward remains one of my favorite authors. Her characters reckon with the ghosts their ancestors left behind, and the very real way they face the same problems and hatred as the ones that came before them.

Not my cup of tea. Some of the writing was beautiful but there was so much slang and so much sadness and heartbreak, you better be able to stomach hearing about abused children. The whole Book focuses on this and the dead family members. Surprised by all the five star reviews, just not my choice.

I really enjoyed this book. This is the first by this author that I have read and It did not disappoint. I will look forward to reading something else by her. I liked the characters and the story line.

This is one of those books that receives such acclaim that I feel guilty for not liking it. Yes, the writing is beautiful and poetic, the characters well defined; but I couldn't relate to any of the characters or the story and found it a depressing read.

I get that Jesmyn Ward is a great author. Her prose is beautiful, but the sad and base characters of this book do not jive with the tone of her words. As I have grown older (62) I want to read redemptive stories. The only redemption in this book are for some ghosts for which the reader is hard pressed to root for over JoJo and even Leonie. The ending was anticlimatic because of this. The only "my gosh, I can't believe that just happened" moment in the book occurs when Pop is recounting his past to JoJo.

A survivor's guide to living by a family in a society where the fiction of hope is replaced daily by each family member's rendition of their fight to live and let live. Love and be loved by choice or accident . . .

I wanted to love this book and was so excited to get it. But it’s about a bunch of drug addict, irresponsible, selfish, stupid people and I just was so disgusted by them. Yes, let’s keep blaming other people and history for your sleaze and drug addiction and never accept responsibility for your own weakness. That note is tiresome and I don’t really care about these people.