Everywhere  I turned, Facebook, book reviews, emails, I kept seeing this book, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. I love the classics and following up on newer books by my favorite authors, but I also wanted to explore what’s trending, and see what all the fuss was about. So I checked this book out of my local library (yes, they had it!), and I was hooked by the first chapter.  Sing, Unburied,Sing, published in 2017, has been compared to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying  for its multiple narrators on a journey, and to Toni Morrison for her lyrical prose and reunion with the dead in Beloved. I would add some elements of John Steinbeck, too, but to tell you why would be a spoiler.This novel earned Ward the National Book Award in 2017 and is the second in a trilogy. The first is Salvage the Bones, published in 2009, and she won the National Book Award for that as well, making her the only Black and only woman to win it twice for fiction. The third piece in the Bois Sauvage trilogy is Where the Line Bleeds (2018).

Sing, Unburied, Sing is the story of three generations of a poor Black family in Mississippi, The main character and primary narrator is Jojo, a thirteen-year-old boy who lives with his grandparents, Pops and Mam, his drug-addicted mother, Leonie, and his three-year-old sister, Kayla.  Jojo is Kayla’s protector and comforter since Leonie is unable to fully step into the role of parent. The children’s father is white, and much of the story evolves around the journey to pick him up from Parchman Prison. His racist parents refuse to accept his children or their mother. His cousin, in fact, murdered Leonie’s teenage brother because he beat him in a shooting contest. Given, the deceased brother, comes back to visit Leonie, contributing to her inability to raise her children or take care of her dying mother. Yet, she is the second narrator, giving us a first-hand view of a dysfunctional parent torn by loyalty to a hope for love and the safety and nurturing of her own children. The third narrator is Richie, the ghost of a young man that Pops mentored in Parchman in order to help him survive the cruelty of racism and prison life. Jojo is the only one who can see and hear him.  Given and Richie are “unburied,” dead, unable to find their way “home” until they understand how and why they died.