Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is a haunting tale of the Jim Crow south and its reverberations, generations deep.

In rural Mississippi, thirteen-year-old Jojo lives with his aging grandparents who he refers to as Mam and Pop. His meth-addicted mother, Leonie, occasionally makes an appearance, but Mam and Pop are the ones raising Jojo and his younger sister Kayla, and Pop tells Jojo stories of the past to teach him how to be a man. These stories include when Pop was in Parchman, the state penitentiary, and he befriended a 12-year-old child who was far too young for the cotton fields of prison where slavery continued.

But Parchman isn’t a thing of the past for this family. Jojo’s white father, Michael, is about to be released from Parchman and Leonie decides to take the children on a trip to retrieve him. With little money and food on this trip, Jojo struggles to care for Kayla while his mom’s mind is on anything but them, but soon literal ghosts complicate things even more than the toxic relationship between Jojo’s parents.

Told in alternating, first-person chapters from most of the main characters, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a beautifully written, hard look at poverty, addiction, racism, and family. Much of the book is introspective and quiet, yet powerful in its message of ghosts from the past haunting current generations. These ghosts come in many forms, from Jim Crow laws, to the war on drugs, to police brutality and racism, to real ghosts not understanding what happened, and this family lives through it all, each one of them empathetic, even when at their worst. It’s easy to have empathy for Jojo and Kayla, but even Leonie and Michael, whose family is not accepting of him having children with a black woman, have their moments.

Jesmyn Ward has done it again, giving us a snapshot of the struggles of this family. She doesn’t offer solutions, happy endings, or clear pictures of where things are going, but gives us the brutal reality many face, and shows that in some families the role model, the strength of the family, doesn’t always lie with the parents.

Set in the farmland of the Mississippi gulf coast, this book follows the story of the family bonds holding Jojo and Kayla to their mother, Leonie. As they travel to the the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the experience will shape their lives forever. An impressive portrait of 21st America and the family dynamic.

This book was an absolute triumph. The writing is compelling and will draw you in, the imagery is vivid and you will find yourself enraptured. Go get you some right away!

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 received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Here it is:


Jesmyn Ward has established herself as one of the more important American authors of her generation. Having won the National Book Award for her debut novel, Salvage The Bones (a book I loved), she followed it up with a memoir, Men We Reap, and edited a collection of essays and poems, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, re-examining the questions James Baldwin had asked fifty years prior about race in America. There is no doubt that Ward has positioned herself as a profound commentator on issues of race in twenty-first century America.

With this track record, her second novel, Sing, Buried, Sing, comes with very high expectations and for the most part Ward meets them. A master of intertwining very intimate and personal experiences with broader questions, Ward gives another gut wrenching story that tackles issues of race, addiction, economic depravity and familial conflict and loss.

The story follows members of a black Mississippi family coming to terms both with the approaching death of the family matriarch (Mam), a drug addicted daughter (Leonie) and long dead son (Given), as well as the struggles of adolescent grandchildren (Jojo and Kayla) forced to come to terms with a painful family history and the consequences everyone still lives with.

Delving into issues of interracial relationships, racial tensions and violence, told through vivid and atmospheric prose (almost poetic), Ward delves deep into the pain that burdens the entire family as the passing of an elder forces them to address the injustice of their past losses.

Ward is the kind of writer who will always write a solid novel, so skillful and thoughtful when dealing with profound themes, giving us characters exuding with empathy, even when they are morally conflicted and damaged individuals. She is a master of the intimate revelation, allowing readers to feel compassion for her subjects but also deal with the broader thematic issues that cautiously lie just below the surface of the story-telling.

While Sing, Buried, Sing does all that, I did not find it quite as compelling as Salvage the Bones. While her first book takes place in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, her newest book does not interact as obviously with such an historic event. This doesn’t take away from the high-quality writing, just maybe makes it a bit less powerful since the broadly known horrors of Katrina are not there to add emotional depth to the book.

At times, the writing also gets bogged down in its own attempts to sound beautiful, and I found this could be distracting. I get annoyed sometimes when writers show off their craft too obviously, and although Ward is certainly a master of hers it came off as too much at times.

Ward’s choice to tell the story from multiple also means that we lose some of the emotional connection for the characters we would have had it been told from just a single person. That said, Ward wants to reveal the complexity of a family unit coming undone, and to limit perspective would likely undermine this. However, in a book of such compact size (barely 300 pages) that comes with some drawbacks.

Nonetheless, Sing, Buried, Sing will still rightfully find much praise. It is longlisted for this year’s National Book Award and I have an inclination that it will be one of the novels looked closely at by the Pulitzer folks.

This book had me addicted from page one. I couldn't help but become invested in Jojo from the very first chapter. The author does such a beautiful job of portraying human complexities. In the beginning I was adamantly against Leonie, but the character's development soon created opposing feeling for me. I adored this ride so much. I look forward to reading more by this author.

{My Thoughts}

What Worked For Me
Vivid Characters – In Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward manages to deliver characters so thoroughly developed, so vividly drawn, that I felt like I’d know them anywhere. This was no small feat for a cast that included an old man with a past he was ashamed of, a drug-addicted mother, a 13-year old boy striving to walk the line between being a boy and a man, a second boy, a ghost in search of a way home, and many more.

“It feels good to be mean, to speak past the baby I can’t hit and let that anger touch another. The one I’m never good enough for. Never Mama for. Just Leonie, a name wrapped around the same disappointed syllables I’ve heard from Mama, from Pop, even from Given, my whole fucking life.”

A Story Inside a Story – Within this beautiful novel Ward planted stories within each other, like Russian nesting dolls. On the outside was Pop, patriarch of a poor black family, and a man struggling to live with honor and dignity. Pop cared for his dying wife and two grandchildren, but had a past that would never quite let him go. Next, Pop’s daughter, Leonie fought through a drug-addled haze, to be with Michael, the father of her children. Michael, the son of a racist white sheriff, was about to be released from prison and Leonine was determined to be there for him. Finally, were Richie and Given, ghosts/spirits who weren’t quite finished with their lives. And through it all was JoJo, the 13-year old boy whose eyes were always open: seeing, observing, questioning. Ward fit her stories together seamlessly.

Flat-out Beautiful Writing – Sing, Unburied, Sing was no easy story to tell. Hope and struggle were at its heart, but along the way Ward tackled racism, the poverty cycle, drugs, death, and parts of America’s shameful history. Never preachy, sometimes painful, often wise, always powerful, Ward’s writing could not have been better.

“When I was thirteen, I knew much more than him. I knew that metal shackles could grow into the skin. I knew that leather could split flesh like butter. I knew that hunger could hurt, could scoop me hollow as a gourd, and that seeing my siblings starving could hollow out a different part of me, too.”

“The tires catch and spit gravel. We hold hands and pretend at forgetting.”

Beautiful. Painful. Powerful.

What Didn’t
Everything about Sing, Unburied, Sing worked for me. Initially, I was a little resistant to the the characters coming from beyond, but was quickly won over by their roles in the story.

{The Final Assessment}

I cannot say this was an easy book to read, but I can say that I loved it. The themes were difficult, the story sad, but the telling was magnificent. Ward delivered a beautifully layered story of a family haunted by both the past and the present. Sing, Unburied, Sing may well leave you haunted, too, for its a book you won’t soon forget. Grade: A

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

Eerie in the best kind of way, "Sing, Unburied, Sing" has a slow burn to it that leaves the reader feeling somehow changed. Incorporating the very real and horrible history of Parchman Farm into a more current family story is an incredibly effective medium for seeing the lasting legacy of these kinds of programs. The characters were all nuanced and complex, realistic, and that was very appreciated, as well.

That was when there was more good than bad, when she’d push me on the swing Pop hung from one of the pecan trees in the front yard, or when she’d sit next to me on sofa and watch TV with me, rubbing my head. Before she was more gone than here. Before she started crushing pills. Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit between a skinned knee.

Past and present collide is a sweeping tale of one Black family in the American South. Jesmyn Ward brings to life the poignant struggles of addiction, incarceration, loyalty and race in her newest novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing. The main narrative revolves around JoJo, an adolescent boy who has taken on the role of caregiver for his toddler sister, Kayla, now that their mother, Leonie, is fully beholden to the drug that she snorts to fill the hole in her heart that remains following her boyfriend’s incarceration.

Three years ago, I did a line and saw Given for the first time. It wasn’t my first line, but Michael had just gone to jail. I had started doing it often; every other day, I was bending over a table, sifting powder into lines, inhaling. I knew I shouldn’t have: I was pregnant. But I couldn’t help wanting to feel the coke go up my nose, shoot straight to my brain, and burn up all the sorrow and despair I felt at Michael being gone.

When Leonie is high she is visited by her brother Given who was shot and killed in a hunting accident that smells strongly of a racially motivated murder. She longs for those moments, the burning of the drugs that help to stem the ache of loss that still pulses in the background for her brother and the injustice he faced.

The visits from her brother serve to remind her of the family she belongs to, the parents she rejects for their apparent complacency in the face of their son’s death and the judgement they heap upon her for the nights she spends away from her children in a drug filled stupor.

But she cannot escape them fully as the very visions she craves are a link to her past; her mother is a healer and practices ancient medicinal techniques, which she once presented as an olive branch to her young daughter. Leonie keeps her visions a secret, rather than turn back toward her family, fearing they are solely a result of the drug habit she so desperately relies on.

It feels good to be mean, to speak past the baby I can’t hit and let that anger touch another. The one I’m never good enough for. Never Mama for. Just Leonie, a name wrapped around the same disappointed syllables I’ve heard from Mama, from Pop, even from Given, my whole fucking life.

Seeking a parental figure, Jojo connects with his grandfather, Pop, reveling in his epic tales of the past, particularly of his time behind the bars of Parchman prison, the very same bars that surround Jojo’s white father, Michael.

In a rare instance of celebration, the entire family is gathered for Jojo’s birthday, which, even then, is shrouded with sadness as the group must surround Mam’s bed as she slowly succumbs to cancer. From the other room the phone rings and Leonie rushes to answer it, pulling herself further from her children and back to the one person she claims loves her.

Micheal is an animal on the other end of the telephone behind a fortress of concrete and bars, his voice traveling over miles of wire and listing, sun-bleached power poles. I know what he is saying, like the birds I hear honking and flying south in the winter, like any other animal. I’m coming home.

This news is a spark that sets the story ablaze. Jojo’s birthday celebration is quickly forgotten, replaced with the immediate need to pack the car and set out to Parchman where Leonie hopes to reunite her family. Jojo’s resistance is palpable because to him his family, Mam and Pop and Kayla, belong at home where they will care for one another.

The journey is fraught with disaster: drugs, illness, poverty, the sticky suffocating heat- vibrant reminders of the plight of the American South. With their arrival at Parchman, the narrative comes full circle when Jojo is visited by a vision of his own- a young Black boy named Richie who was incarcerated along side Pop.

I want to tell the boy in the car this. Want to tell him how he pop tried to save me again and again but he couldn’t.

It is through this third narrative that the story is rounded out, reaching a new depth that exposes the haunting truths behind Pop’s tales and Jojo’s family’s future. Ward crafts an epic novel likened by many to an esteemed group of well known classics; however, Sing, Unburied, Sing tells a significant and unforgettable story all its own

You're looking for a review, but you're getting a prediction: Sing, Unburied, Sing will not only be regarded as the most important work of fiction published in 2017, but it will prove to be of enduring significance. As in, make some space on your mantle, Jesmyn Ward, your National Book Award is about to receive important company.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is the novel America needs right now. Reading it will go a long way toward gaining an understanding of the divide increasingly felt throughout the country. If fiction's greatest asset is to engender empathy, this novel has more than pulled its weight. A true 5 star read that will endure long after most of the year's other "big" titles have faded away. Rarely have I picked up a new novel and been able to know that I'm reading something historically good. This is a work that will be studied decades from now, and readers should glory in the opportunity to read and feel it at its original release.

This was my first Jesmyn Ward, so it wasn't quite what I expected, but I am definitely interested in reading more by this author!

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.

I fell in love with Jesmyn Ward’s prose when I heard her read at the University of Texas in 2015. I immediately went out and read Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped, which cemented Ward's place on my list of favorite contemporary authors. Her books take on difficult and often unpleasant topics with beautiful prose and expertly drawn characters; Sing, Unburied Sing is no different.

The novel opens on 13-year-old Jojo’s birthday, an event which is eclipsed by the news that his father will soon be released from prison. His meth addict mother, Leonie, drags him, his baby sister, and her friend Misty along for the ride up to the Mississippi State Penitentiary. What follows is a Southern odyssey that deals with the themes of life, death, race, family, hope, and struggle.

Like Ward’s other novels, Sing, Unburied Sing depicts an American experience that many of us are privileged enough to never know, or fully understand. Her books should be required reading for everyone—until then, do yourself a favor and get acquainted with her work.

Beautiful and touching book. So well written. I loved every page and might read it again! Highly recommend!

Someone commented in a review that Jesmyn Ward’s new book, Sing, Unburied, Sing outshone her other books. Having read those other books, I doubted whether that was possible.

Set in a fictional town in her native Mississippi, the story revolves around a trip. Thirteen-year-old Jojo and toddler Kayla live with their African American grandparents – Pop who centers the family and Mam who is dying of cancer. Kayla clings to Jojo as a parental figure. Pop, who has spent time in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, tells Jojo stories to help him learn about life.

When the children’s white father is to be released from Parchman, their drug-addicted mother, who moves in and out of their lives, shows up demanding that they accompany her and her girl friend to the penitentiary for his release. Uninvited guests from the spirit world join them – her long dead brother who shows up to Leonie when she is high on drugs and Richie, a boy prisoner befriended by the grandfather when he was at Parchman who shows up to Jojo. Both spirits recall a past that forms their present. Richie follows them home and forces Jojo to ask hard questions of his grandfather Rivers.

Well-drawn individuals, both living and dead, and complex relationships are placed in a setting that becomes another character in the story. Jesmyn Ward’s way with words makes for a book that lingers when put aside between chapters and long after the last page is finished.

A doubter no longer, I agree this is her best book yet. In an interview, she said it took three years to finish – three years well spent.

It was the ghosts, folks. It was the ghosts that made me do it. They made me change my mind and go with 2 stars instead of my original 3. It’s just that they were such a big part of this book. If they had been smaller and kept their mouths shut, I would be handing you 3 stars. I wanted to be closer in stars to my gushing friends, but that just didn’t happen. I didn’t like this book, period. And of course, I have a Complaint Board to prove it.

I did like a few things about the book, so let me start with the Joy Jar:



Mesmerizing language. For a while, it took me to a cool place and created a strong mood.

Intense family. I was interested in the family. It’s biracial, with a junkie mom, nice kids, kind grandparents, and a dad who just got out of prison. They are poor and they live in the deep South.

He said, she said. I liked the format of having two narrators who alternated chapters.

Jojo was a nice kid. One of the main characters, a 12-year-old boy named Jojo, was super well-drawn and sympathetic.

An intense car ride, punctuated by a lot of puke. (Yes, seldom do you see the word “puke” in the Joy Jar.) There was a harrowing road trip, which had me twitching with interest and fear. Nearly half the book took place in a claustrophobic car full of sweat, vomit, and tension. Inside were two poor kids and three drug-addicted adults.

But my Complaint Board is way fuller. Here goes:

Sure, I’ve always wanted to hear the gory details of a goat being slaughtered. The very first scene, POW, a grandpa is showing his grandson how to kill and gut a goat. Seriously. I had to skip pages, it was so graphic. The boy then carried goat parts into the house where these parts would be cooked and served for din din. This scene threw me for a loop and I became very wary of what I was signing up for. I will say that that was the only slaughter scene, but still…what a way to start a book! I know the author was going for authenticity—yes, they are ruggedly poor people who eat goat—but I do think the story would have been just fine without this scene.

Get real. They would if they could, but ghosts just can’t get real. Okay, I try to like ghosts (and occasionally I can), but here they chased me right out of town. I just can’t shut up about these annoying ghosts, can I? They are major characters here and I just wanted to shove them out of the book. They took up a lot of space. There were two of them (one for each main character) sitting in the back seat of a car or just walking around outside--in general getting in the way of the real people. And of course, there were entire conversations that took place between the ghosts and the main characters. To make matters worse, the ghosts sometimes had their own chapters! “Oh no!,” I yelled, as I saw the ghost’s name head the chapter. I wanted to get back to the real story. Real people. (Never mind that they are characters, lol, not real people.)

I like the scenery, but can we talk? This is where the language did a little overkill in the mesmerizing department. Rich language often turns into work for me when a lot of it is used to describe scenery. I prefer dialogue and action.

Character clichés. Except for Jojo, the characters just seemed to be stereotypes: the junkie mom, the kind granddad. I didn’t feel any attachment.

A little woo-woo makes me weary. Besides the ghosts, which were bad enough, there were magic herbs and an overall woo-woo feel. Let me out of here.

Where did these big words that begin with “i” come from? Here we are in the rural south with little education, and occasionally big words--SAT vocabulary words with 4 or 5 syllables—come out of the characters’ mouths. Twelve-year-old Jojo, his junkie mom, and even a ghost uttered one of these three words: inexorably, indomitable, immolating. What? I don’t even use these words. In fact, I had to look them up! And there were several other sophisticated words and sentence structures. An editor should have been checking the authenticity of voice better.

Drama in the car. Quite a tense car ride (and except for the ghost squeezed below the seats, I liked it). I don’t want to give anything away, but based on the tone and content of the story, I thought things were going in a different direction than they did. In a way, this seemed anti-climactic. (Hand covering mouth so I don’t reveal anything.)

The name game. Again, an editorial nit. The mom always called her toddler by Michaela; her twelve-year-old son called her Kayla. Toward the end, mom was suddenly using Kayla instead. This seemed like something the editor missed.

Crawling along. I found it slow going for most of the read. Looking at page numbers is always a bad sign.

As I said earlier, this is a book I desperately wanted to love, if for no other reason than to be part of the crowd. I do think the writing is brilliant; it’s just not my cup of tea. I liked Ward’s earlier award-winning book, Salvage the Bones, better, though it still only earned 3 stars from me. I’m pretty sure I won’t try Ward’s next one.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

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.

Jesmyn Ward said that her newest novel was inspired by Faulkner, Morrison, The Odyssey, and the Old Testament. When I read that, I was pretty sure that couldn't possibly hold. I was so wrong. This is an absolutely amazing, sweeping journey novel that captures a moment in the American psyche in a way that I didn't think was possible.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is an intimate snapshot of a family, but it's also an enormous story of struggle, hope, loss, and the weight of the past.

Jojo and his younger sister Kayla live with their grandparents on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, and occasionally their drug addicted mother Leonie. When Jojo and Kayla's father is being released from prison, Leonie insists on taking her children to pick him up. The journey is unpredictable and dangerous, and the events of the trip test the bounds of family and memory.

This is a story about family and responsibility, about trauma and memory. It's about the ties that connect us as Americans. It's unlike anything else I've ever read.