Nearly half the book took place in a claustrophobic car full of sweat, vomit, and tension. (Yes, seldom do you see the word “puke” in the Joy Jar.) There was a harrowing road trip, which had me twitching with interest and fear. One of the main characters, a 12-year-old boy named Jojo, was super well-drawn and sympathetic.Īn intense car ride, punctuated by a lot of puke. I liked the format of having two narrators who alternated chapters. They are poor and they live in the deep South. It’s biracial, with a junkie mom, nice kids, kind grandparents, and a dad who just got out of prison.

For a while, it took me to a cool place and created a strong mood. I did like a few things about the book, so let me start with the Joy Jar: And of course, I have a Complaint Board to prove it. I wanted to be closer in stars to my gushing friends, but that just didn’t happen. If they had been smaller and kept their mouths shut, I would be handing you 3 stars. It’s just that they were such a big part of this book. They made me change my mind and go with 2 stars instead of my original 3. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature. Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. 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 across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. 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. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers. 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. 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.

Author of sing unburied sing