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).
