Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
Audiobook8 hours

Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, the story of a family on a journey through rural Mississippi, is a “tour de force” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and a timeless work of fiction that is destined to become a classic.

Jesmyn Ward’s historic second National Book Award–winner is “perfectly poised for the moment” (The New York Times), an intimate portrait of three generations of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. “Ward’s writing throbs with life, grief, and love… this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it” (Buzzfeed).

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic and unforgettable family story and “an odyssey through rural Mississippi’s past and present” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Editor's Note

Beauty that lingers…

This winner of the 2017 National Book Award draws on Morrison, Faulkner, and Greek myths to play with the classic American road novel, weaving magical realism into the modern, rural South. Sentences rise together to form a penetrating story that lingers like fog on the Mississippi bayou where the novel is set.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 5, 2017
ISBN9781508236139
Author

Jesmyn Ward

JESMYN WARD received her MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008 to 2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010–2011 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. She lives in Mississippi.

More audiobooks from Jesmyn Ward

Related to Sing, Unburied, Sing

Related audiobooks

Literary Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Sing, Unburied, Sing

Rating: 4.121454429090909 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,375 ratings121 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very very good. Thank you. Say good bye he he

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the first Jesmyn Ward book that I read and it certainly won't be the last. One of the things that made me adore this is Jesmyn's writing - so eloquent, heartbreaking, and imaginative.

    It follows the story of a family haunted by past mistakes, regrets in the present, and a hazy future. The flaws of the characters take center stage, told in three POVs. Each character struggles with forgiveness and redemption and Jesmyn does a very convincing job in weaving a tough-to-swallow commentary that puts a spotlight on drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, parental negligence, physical abuse, racism, racial inequality, racial profiling, white privilege, rape, sexual harassment, and death of a loved one.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The book, the voices that read it, so real, so heart-wrenching. I love it!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Admittedly, I suspected some kind of imitation Faulkner as I started to get into this, but this is a very fine thing. The supernatural is handled brilliantly and the novel builds and concludes like a bomb.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I enjoyed this book there are definitely parts I want to go back and revisit
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely amazing. An excellent example of artful storytelling. The audio book version is wonderful with the different actors reading the three different characters whose world we see through their eyes. Beautifully done!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There is so much I want to say about this book but I can’t find the words. This book was written so wonderfully well. Such an interesting story.
    I would love to be able to write like Jesmyn Ward…she is the truth!!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was very nicely acted; and, it has a very interesting powerful story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was both captivating and hard for me to read. The story was steeped in racism in the deep south. A depressed people living hard lives. There were no positives for these characters except for the love they had for each other. And in some cases even that was not enough. Probably because it was a depressing story I didn’t want to rate this book a 4. I cannot say “I liked it”. But it is so beautifully written it definitely deserves more than an OK (3).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved how he was very protected of his little sister.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked “salvage the bones” better. It kept my interest though.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic storytelling and great characterization! The narrators made it come alive!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A good, complex. A mix of history historical fiction, complex family dynamics, and voodoo sci-fi.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm supposed I didn't like this books much as I thought I would, it just didn't captive my interest. It was interesting but not interesting enough to follow along clearly when the writer jumps back and forth between the living characters and the words of the ghost speaking. I had to keep going back listening to clarify who was talking and if they were present or dead. I would give this book at 3.5
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Literally the best book i read last year. Such a beautiful novel that I cannot wait to read again
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Holy crap. That was amazing. The writing is unbelievable, and the voices are perfect. I just lay on my bed and listened to the last hour without moving. You have to listen to this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, are being raised by their mother's parents on a small farm in southern Mississippi. Their mother (Leonie) ostensibly lives with them, too, but her drug addiction and selfish ways make her an unreliable presence and a mean one at that. With the bedridden Mam (the grandmother) slowly dying of cancer and Pop (the grandfather) doing his best to teach Jojo how to be a decent grown man, Jojo is torn between acquiescing to his mother's demand that he and Kayla go with her on her road trip to pick up their father, who has just been released from prison, and doing what he really wants, which is to stay home with his grandparents. In the end, he and Kayla, whom Jojo is essentially parenting on his own, go with their mother. The resulting road trip is full of potential dangers, stupid and selfish decisions on Leonie's part, and complicated family dynamics. Along with this main story, we get parallel narratives of Pop's past experiences in the same prison farm that Jojo's dad is in, and the history of Leonie's brother, who was lynched by a group of white boys that included Jojo's father's cousin. There's also an element of the supernatural here, with the ghosts of both Leonie's brother and Pop's friend, who died at the prison farm, making themselves felt by certain inhabitants of the road trip car.I'm wholly surprised by how much I liked this novel, since normally the genre is too bleak for me. And this one is plenty grim in its own way, but told in a manner that makes the story itself overpower that darkness. Leonie in any other story would have been enough for me to throw the (audio)book across the room and quit - I can't stand bad mothers; they make me so smad - but my need to know how Jojo's and Pop's stories ended kept me intrigued enough to just make a face at Leonie and keep listening. Her complexities help here, too - she's not just a shitty, drug-addicted parent; she's a product of her circumstances as much as of her bad choices. But even more than the story itself, the writing held me entranced. Gorgeous, gorgeous prose, even when it's Leonie's ugly thoughts we're witnessing. I'll certainly be back for more Ward.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Set in a poor black Mississippi family, we have the truly lovely grandparents (grandma is terminally ill with cancer); the grandkids- 13 yr old Jojo, surroogate parent to his toddler sister....and the kids' mother, lEONIE, with a drug habit and a white boyfriend with deeply racist parents...In a hellish road trip to collect the boyfriend from jail/ pick up some meth (with kids on board ), the reader is introduced to ghosts too- that of Leonie's brother, shot in a racist attack. And a young boy who - years ago- the grandfather protected while serving time...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Haunting. Jesmyn Ward has been described as the heir to Toni Morrison, and she absolutely deserves that title. She relentlessly depicts the effects of poverty, racism, and drugs in the deep South. But while Salvage the Bones shows the strength of family ties, Sing, Unburied, Sing heartbreakingly shows their limitations. This is a devastating story that I will be thinking about for a long time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ghosts from the Slave Grounds

    National Book Award for Fiction and recent MacArthur Genius Award winner Jesmyn Ward explores family bonds and racial prejudice and oppression in Sing, Unburied, Sing. Racism permeates the patch traversed by Jojo and his sister Kayla, his grandfather Pop and dying mother Mam, and his self-absorbed mother Leonie and his white father Michael, the pair not much older than children, and brings forth his murdered uncle Given, and another thirteen-year-old boy Richie, killed on the prison farm of Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary). Both Given and Richie, visible to Jojo, seek but can never find the release of justice, both stark and brutal reminders that post-racial America exists merely as a rhetorical phrase fronting a myth. As grim as this sounds, and as shocking as the family’s odyssey proves, Ward does find hope in the familial bonds of Jojo, Kayla, and Pop.

    The story is about two journeys, one in real time and the other through recent history. Leonie solicits her white friend Misty, who has an imprisoned black boyfriend, to retrieve Michael from Parchman with her, where he has finished his term for cooking and selling meth. She thinks it’s a good idea to bring along her children, Kayla, a toddler, and Jojo, thirteen. As readers learn, she isn’t much of a mother, so bad and absent that her children can’t call her mom. She works but her passions are Michael, longing for Michael, and getting high. The burden of caring for the children fall to Pop and Mam, who now lies in bed, wracked by pain as she dies of cancer. Fortunately for Kayla and Jojo, Pop knows how to care for his family. As Jojo and Kayla share a special bond, so do Jojo and Pop. Pop teaches him how to live on the farm, the secrets of the woods and the animals, and of survival. He’s a man who has seen and experienced much pain in his life, including having served a term as a teen in Parchman. Slowly, over time, he tells Jojo the story of Richie, which is the tale of black oppression summed up in the short, brutal life of a thirteen-year-old boy. It’s a story Pop can barely finish, because, as readers will eventually learn, the ending is so horrifying.

    Needless to say, the auto trip proves excruciating for the four, partly because Kayla becomes sick during it and nobody but Jojo seems to care or know how to comfort and help the child. When they eventually pick up Michael, the return trip devolves into something even more harrowing. Before getting Micheal, Leonie and Misty stop over at their lawyer’s house, Al. When you are dirt poor, as these people are, you get the Als of the world, representation by a drug addled wasted white man. He sends them off with crystal meth, and wouldn’t you know it, only hours out of prison, a cop pulls them over. Leonie, out love perhaps, desperation for certain, swallows the meth and what results nearly costs the travelers their freedom, and Jojo his life. It’s a scene straight out of a worst nightmare.

    As if this wasn’t enough, Leonie possesses the ability envied by her mother, of seeing the dead. Perhaps this is supernatural, but it’s more likely the pain of losing her brother Given to murder. Suffice to say here that against all good advice, star athlete Given thought his white teammates regarded him as he regarded him, as brothers. In the end, his trust and misreading of race killed him as surely as the bullet. Let’s leave it for readers to discover the circumstances on their own. Leonie believes she sees him, voiceless, observing all her bad deeds. Jojo possesses this ability as well. It manifests when they pick up Michael from Parchman and Richie hitches a ride to find his old benefactor, Pop, whom he knows as River. What is little, perpetually a child Ritchie seeking? He’s wants the one person he felt ever acknowledged and cared about him. There’s much sadness here, but none sadder than Ritchie and what he represents.

    While many will think, no, this isn’t a book for me, it, in fact, probably is a book for you, and especially for people who will never know about it. Because it is a story that needs telling and feeling on a visceral level, with the right among of openness to receive and acknowledge it. Strongly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Remarkable, humbling
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    adult fiction (race relations in modern Mississippi, prison stories, ghosts). I'd be surprised if this doesn't win some sort of award.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    13-year-old Jojo lives with his toddler sister, Kayla, his loving grandparents, Pop, kind and protective, and Mam, bedridden with cancer, and his often absent, often high mother, Leonie. This is a poor black family, but Leonie's husband, and father of her children, Michael, is white. She loves him to a fault, abandoning her children when the mood strikes her to be with him. He too is a drug addict, but he loves Leonie.The action centers around a trip to bring Michael home when he is released from prison. Leonie takes both of her children, and also her best friend and fellow drug abuser. Along the trip Leonie is visited occasionally by the ghost of her dead brother, and Jojo is visited by the ghost of a boy his own age who died in prison with Pop, many years earlier. For me, the ghost element was disconcerting, and left me getting more out of Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones; Ward's two earlier novels. This book is exceptional, and I'd still recommend it - I just like the others more.It is a dismal and sad tale, with very little uplifting to it, except for the solemn honesty of Pop, and the innocence of Jojo. But all of the characters are well developed, and multi-faceted. None of them are portrayed as 100% bad (with the possible exception of Michael's father.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I thought, since this book was supposed to be the second in a series, I would find out what happened to the characters in Salvage The Bones, but Skeetah and Esch are only briefly mentioned in passing. Sing, Unburied, Sing is about a thirteen-year-old boy named Jojo and his poor but gifted family. His mother, Leonie, sees ghosts but doesn't have what it takes to be a mother, so JoJo is brother and mother to his younger sister, Kayla. When the three of them embark on a road trip to retrieve Jojo and Kayla's father, Michael, from prison, they also pick up Richie, another thirteen-year-old boy who is a ghost searching for answers to his violent death. As only Jesmyn Ward can, this story delivers a raw and emotional journey into southern life, death, and everything in between.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Woman goes to pick up her boyfriend from jail. Son and daughter accompany her. The writing is pretty, but I didn't get the story really.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Words fail me, except that Jesmyn Ward may be one of our most influential writers in the States. This novel has ties to Beloved but maintains her own unique style. The book is haunted by two ghosts: Leonie's brother Given; and Richie, a young boy who Pap cared for in prison. Jojo and Kayla may only be children, but they are tough and sympathetic. Even Leonie, who is haunted by Given, her addictions, and her love for Michael, makes me feel a wringing sense of pity. Certainly in my contenders for Book of 2017.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I don't know what the hype is about regarding this book. I did not get much out of it. I kept waiting for the plot to begin and then I noticed I was three-quarters done. I liked Jojo, but not Leonie, so I couldn't wait until her sections were done. Maybe I needed to read the first book? It's not that I was lost, I just didn't really care about the characters and I gained no new insights into their culture (that is, this is nothing I haven't read in other books). What did I miss?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4.5 This is beautifully written and alternates between the present and the past with 3 voices: JoJo the main narrator, a 13 year old boy; Leonie, his less-than-proficient mother (he doesn't even call her Mom) and Richie, a "ghost" from the past. JoJo is essentially raised by Pop and Mam, his grandparents. Pop is a patient, kind, upright man and Mam made up for the love JoJo misses from Leonie - until cancer had weakened her and made her bed-ridden. Meanwhile, JoJo is raising his 3-yr-old sister Kayla. His (white) father Michael is in jail. These family dynamics are complicated, but the societal ones are even more so. It spans 1950-present day in rural MS and it's hard to see that much has changed. Leonie's view: "Sometimes the world don't give you what you need, no matter how hard you look." (104) The best way to describe this book is that it is a ghost story: the characters are haunted by real events and societal patterns and the mindset and (lack of ) opportunity that goes with poverty and minimal education and small lives. There is some magical realism or element of other-worldly here too as Mam, Leonie and JoJo all have the "gift" that manifests in different ways. Pop unjustly served time in Parchman, a legendary MS prison -- the same place Michael is now for manufacturing meth. Richie was a 12-yr old boy also in the prison whom Pop tried to save. He is now a troubled, trapped ghost seeking closure. He says "Home ain't always about a place....Home is about the earth. Whether the earth open to you. Whether it pull you so close the space between you and it melt and y'all one and it beats like your heart. Same time....The place is the song and I'm going to be part of the song." JoJo is the link between past and present and the agent of healing and redemption. Kaylie too in her own way, which proves there is hope for the future. This is not an easy read, but it is a worthwhile one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wow, this was an excellent book. It takes place in Mississippi, where, amidst extreme racial tension, Leonie, who is Black, and Micheal, who is White, have fallen in love and had two children. Michael has been in jail and is about to be released, so Leonie brings the kids, JoJo and Michaela, to pick him up. Leonie is a careless young mother, addicted to opioids and prioritizing herself. Jojo and Michaela are, in essence, being raised by their grandparents. There is a lot going on in this book, told from shifting points of view by Leonie and Jojo and the ghost of a young boy who was incarcerated with Jojo's grandfather decades ago. It all holds together very well, though. It's a complex look at family secrets, racism through a period of decades, and addiction. For me, I really struggle reading books that include drug use. For whatever reason, that is the topic that makes me most uncomfortable and upset (that and violence towards animals) - more than reading about violence, murder, abuse, poverty, etc. So reading this book was not easy for me, but I'm glad I stuck with it because it was very well done. I read in other reviews that some readers didn't like the ghost element, but I thought that was what really made the book special. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was quite interesting, but there were parts that I thought were unnecessary. There was a lot of discussion about traditions and I appreciated that because many younger generations do not want to continue family traditions. I also was a bit confused at some points about what was actually happening such as was she really seeing this person, is she hallucinating, or was she sick and seeing ghosts? Eventually, I figured it out, but it took some time and the audio may have made me think longer during those moments.