Sing, Unburied, Sing is the third novel by the American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner in 2017. It focuses on a family in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017. The novel won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction.
Plot
The novel begins on Jojo's thirteenth birthday. Jojo tries to help his grandfather, Pop, kill a goat but he is sickened by the slaughter. While Pop is cooking the goat stew, he tells Jojo about how he was sent to Parchman prison with his older brother, Stag, where Pop met Richie a 12-year-old inmate.
Leonie receives a call from Michael, Jojo and Kayla's father, informing Leonie that he is being released from prison. The next day Leonie argues with Pop about whether she should take Jojo and Kayla with her on the trip to get Michael. At Mam's suggestion Leonie invites her coworker Misty, whose boyfriend is also incarcerated in Parchman. While she talks to her mom, Leonie realizes that Mam's cancer is getting worse.
Leonie makes a stop at the house of a white woman, where Jojo finds a man cooking meth. Misty leaves the woman's house with a bag of meth that she tries to hide from Jojo and Kayla.
Back in the car, Kayla begins to get sick. Leonie remembers Mam teaching her about plants that help with an upset stomach. Leonie needs wild strawberries but is only able to find wild blackberries. Jojo holds Kayla and tries to comfort her by telling her stories. Eventually, they stop for the night at the house of Al, Michael's lawyer. Leonie tries to make a medicinal recipe with the blackberry leaves. Jojo doesn’t trust Leonie and doesn’t think the wild blackberries will help, but he is afraid Leonie will hit him if he says anything. After Leonie, Misty, and Al leave the room, Jojo forces Kayla to throw up Leonie's mixture.
In the morning they drive to Parchman and check Michael out of prison. When Michael comes out, he embraces Leonie. He tries to hold Kayla but she doesn’t recognize him. Kayla throws up again. Jojo looks outside the car and sees the ghost of Richie.
The next chapter is narrated by Richie. He recognizes Jojo as Pop's child and recalls how Pop protected him while they were in Parchman. No one in the car except for Jojo and Kayla can see Richie.
Returning to the present car ride, the group is pulled over by a police officer. There is no time to hide the meth, so Leonie swallows it. Leonie tells the officer that they are coming back from Parchman. The officer handcuffs Leonie and Michael. Jojo exits the car with Kayla and the officer handcuffs him too. When the officer handcuffs and pulls his gun on Jojo Misty drops Kayla, who runs to Jojo and wraps herself around him. Kayla throws up on the officer who lets everyone go.
When they arrive back at Michael's parents' house, his mother is at first civil and urges Michael's dad, Big Joseph, to do the same. However, Big Joseph is unable to restrain himself and calls Leonie a slur. Michael head-butts Big Joseph, and they start fighting. Unwelcome at Michael's family home they drive back to Pop and Mam's house. Leonie goes to see Mam, who tells her to gather necessary items to perform a ritual to summon Maman Brigitte, a death loa in voodoo. Richie sees Pop and tries to talk to him, but Pop is unable to see him.
Jojo asks Pop about what happened to Richie, so Pop finally tells Jojo. A man named Blue raped one of the female inmates at Parchman. Richie caught Blue in the act and escaped Parchman with him. While they were running, Blue happened upon a white girl and ripped her dress. The girl then reported this incident, so the local white population decided to seek revenge by lynching Blue. Pop knew that the white men wouldn't make a distinction between Blue and Richie. When the white men caught up with Blue and Richie, they skinned Blue alive and cut off parts of his body. To protect Richie from the same fate, Pop stabbed him in the neck, killing him quickly. Pop has been haunted by this action ever since. After he tells Jojo the story, he breaks down in tears, and Jojo consoles him. Richie's ghost screams and disappears.
Leonie enters Mam's room to find her in a terrible state. Mam tells Leonie that it is too late. Mam sees a vengeful Richie on the ceiling. Richie shouts at Mam, urging her to come with him, but Given shouts at him that Mam is not his mother. Jojo and Pop run in and Leonie jumps into action and begins saying the litany to summon Maman Brigitte. Jojo tells Richie to leave because nobody owes him anything anymore. Richie leaves and Given takes Mam with him. Mam dies. Michael comes back, and he and Leonie leave together.
In the final chapter, Jojo explains that he sleeps in Leonie's bed now. Leonie and Michael only come home a few days a week. They are described as "fish-thin" as a result of their worsening addictions. Pop sleeps in Mam's room now and talks to himself at night, searching for Mam. Jojo is not able to see the ghosts of Mam and Given; he only sees Richie. He also sees other ghosts depicted in the branches of a large tree who have all died through violent means. Kayla tells the ghosts to go home, but they don’t listen to her. She begins to sing and they all smile with relief.
Characters Joseph "Jojo" is a main character and one of three narrators. Named after his paternal grandfather, he is the child of Michael, who is white, and Leonie, who is Black. The story starts on his thirteenth birthday at his maternal grandparents' house in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Throughout the book, Jojo often acts as a parent to his younger sister Kayla because his mother, Leonie, is not always present. Because of his strained relationship with his mother, Jojo looks up to his grandfather, who has been more of a paternal figure while Jojo's father was in prison, and wishes to be like him. Throughout the book, Jojo has many conversations with spirits while helping them move on to the afterlife.
Leonie Stone is the daughter of River and Philomène and mother to Jojo and Kayla. She is the second of three narrators of the story. Leonie became pregnant at 17, not certain she wanted to be a mother. The trauma of her younger life leads Leonie to cope by turning to drugs. The high from the drugs gives her the ability to see her deceased brother, Given. Leonie is consumed by her love for Michael and is inattentive to the needs of her children. Leonie and Michael previously had plans to move to California together which were interrupted by the birth of Jojo, creating a rift between the two. She is also jealous of her children's relationship because it reminds her of the brother she lost too early in life and her failures as a mother, since Jojo takes on more of her parental role.
River (Pop) Stone is Jojo's and Kayla's maternal grandfather. He is the father of Leonie and Given. He is the main parental figure in Jojo's life, which makes him the role model Jojo looks up to. He is quietly dignified and capable. Pop spent some time in Parchman prison when he was young and developed a "care giver" relationship with another inmate, Richie. Pop shares pieces of his stories with Jojo about Richie and Parchman throughout the book. In prison, he was known as River Red.
Philomène (Mam) Stone is Jojo and Kayla's maternal grandmother. She is the mother of Leonie and Given. She comes from a long line of women who can heal and communicate with dead people. This gift was not passed on to her daughter, Leonie, but instead to her grandchildren. Mam steps up to look after Jojo and Kayla when she realizes Leonie does not care enough for her children. Mam is sick with cancer when the novel begins and becomes bedridden from chemotherapy treatments, which ultimately forces Leonie to step up as a motherly figure.
Misty is Leonie's white friend from work. Misty and Leonie are bound to each other by their drug addiction and their bond over both being in interracial relationships. Misty joins Leonie on a road trip to Parchman prison to pick up Michael after his release.
Michael Ladner is Leonie's boyfriend and the father of Jojo and Kayla. He is white and comes from a racist family that doesn’t accept his relationship with Leonie or their kids. Michael, however, is not racist. At the beginning of the novel, he is incarcerated in the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, for drug trafficking. He then rejoins his family after Leonie and their children pick him up. Like Leonie, Michael is an absent parent who also has a drug addiction issue. Before he was incarcerated, Michael worked as a rig welder on the Deepwater Horizon. He survived the explosion but knew the eleven men that were killed. His experiences on the oil rig impacted him greatly and cause him nightmares.
Michaela (Kayla) is Jojo's three-year-old little sister, named after her father Michael. She interacts with Jojo as a parental figure and prefers him to her mother, Leonie. Kayla, like Jojo, is able to see ghosts. Kayla is given the final word of "shh" to her brother. Kayla is emblematic of the future. Through Kayla's voice in the final scene, Ward ends this novel on an optimistic note.
Given Stone is Leonie's older brother who was murdered on a hunting trip by Michael's cousin when he was a senior in high school. Given played football in high school and was thought to have a promising college athletic career ahead of him. Leonie sees Given's ghost throughout the novel, especially when she uses drugs. It is not until the penultimate chapter that Given's ghost is freed, and Leonie does not see him anymore.
Richie knows River from their time spent together in Parchman. He was imprisoned in Parchman at twelve years old for stealing food to feed his nine siblings. Richie tried to escape later with an inmate named Blue, who was skinned and killed during their failed attempt. River killed Richie to spare him from any further pain he would face as a result of the white mob that would have inevitably killed him in a similar manner to Blue. Richie's ghost follows Jojo back to Pop after Jojo arrives to pick up his father from Parchman. Richie is the third narrator of the story and he struggles to understand and accept his death.
Big Joseph Ladner is Michael's father. He does not have a good relationship with his son and the rest of the family because Michael is in a relationship with Leonie, a Black woman. Big Joseph was present at the trial for his nephew after shooting Leonie’s brother prior to her and Michael’s relationship which adds to Leonie’s discomfort with Big Joseph. When Michael, Leonie, Jojo, and Kayla visit him, it results in Big Joseph and Michael physically fighting.
Maggie Ladner is Michael's mother. She, also, does not have a healthy relationship with her son, but unlike her husband, she tries to make an effort. She inhospitably welcomes Michael, Leonie, Jojo, and Kayla into her home in an effort to salvage her relationship with her son, but will not stand up to her husband.
Al is Michael's lawyer. He is assumed to be addicted to drugs, presumably meth.
Themes
Sing, Unburied, Sing is the first of Ward's novels to introduce a supernatural element. A dead boy, Richie, is one of the narrators, and other ghosts are found throughout the novel as they tie the past to the present and future. Likewise, Mam and Pop project a belief in spirituality through gris-gris bags, which contain objects of nature that are assumed to administer power for humans. In the novel, the spiritual connection between nature and man is prevalent through their African-based traditions.