The most desirable quality of a book, in my perspective, is its ability to destroy you. There is a certain type of writer who can utterly strip you of your polities, leave your nerve endings exposed, and having so thoroughly dismantled you allows you new space in which to rebuild. The books I have that fit this description leave me nearly breathless at the end, and I always need a short break before moving onto the next book. I don’t know if it’s a celebration or a mourning period.
From the very first sentence, Sing, Unburied, Sing, holds no punches.
“I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that’s something I could look at straight. When Pop tells me he need my help, and I see that black knife slid into the belt of his pants, I follow Pop out of the house, try to keep my back straight, my shoulders even as a hanger; that’s how Pop walks.”
The novel by Jesmyn Ward burns intensely yet slowly. It draws you into the lives of one small family in rural Mississippi; though perspective switches with each chapter, we most intimately follow 13-year-old Jojo as he cares for his younger sister Kayla, learns to model manhood from his grandfather, and navigates changing relationships with his grandmother, mother, and his mother’s boyfriend. Throughout the book we see Jojo stretching by fits and starts into the frame of a man, learning to inhabit a space in his family’s history along the way.
Though it says right on the back of the book that Sing is “part ghost story, part road novel,” I honestly thought it was meant in a metaphoric sense. The supernatural isn’t typically my jam. But in Sing, Unburied, Sing, the “ghost story” is woven so intimately into the narrative that it comes off not as a supernatural proposition but a thinly veiled aspect of our natural lives. This book was a practice in adopting a spirituality not of my own, relating to a history I lay no claim to, sympathizing with lives worlds from mine, yet embedded in the legacy of the country I share.
Ward’s characters are flawed, imperfect, but none are entirely unsympathetic. The story takes shape around a road trip through Mississippi, but the real action is in the very everyday interactions of the characters. It celebrates daily life and makes us question what is mundane and what is mystical. Honest, heartfelt, and eloquent, Sing is a timeless narrative that reads like poetry and shocks like a horror novel.