A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come …
A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out for Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the truths at the heart of the American story and the power and limitations of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.
This description comes from the 2017 Scribner edition.
I was not expecting the emotional roller coaster going into this book. The turn that the book takes about half way through that suddenly throws some magical realism into the plot threw me off a little. I would recommend this, but just make sure that you're up for a pretty bleak book.
I was not expecting the emotional roller coaster going into this book. The turn that the book takes about half way through that suddenly throws some magical realism into the plot threw me off a little. I would recommend this, but just make sure that you're up for a pretty bleak book.
This lyrically beautiful novel explores rural Mississippi, masterfully demonstrating how the present and all its struggles never seem far from the brutal past that created them. The questions that this novel leaves about what hope and healing look like in the rural South are pertinent ones, and their delivery is somehow both searing and soothing, holding our feet to the fire while knowing it is what we need most.
This was both hard to read and hard to put down. I think Ward does an incredible job at keeping the balance between heartbreaking and heart-filling, and she never crosses over to the point that I couldn't bear to witness the pain. These characters will stay with me a long time.
This was both hard to read and hard to put down. I think Ward does an incredible job at keeping the balance between heartbreaking and heart-filling, and she never crosses over to the point that I couldn't bear to witness the pain. These characters will stay with me a long time.
