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).
