Their ghosts wear breeches, but they also wear hoodies. If you are really alert, you see the life that exists beyond the life that's on top." Ward's characters are alert, too: they understand animals and toddlers, and they see ghosts because they know that history and present are the same. But Ward's ghosts don't feel fantastical - rather like a kind of heightened memory, much like the ghosts of Toni Morrison, who told NPR in a 2004 interview: "I think of ghosts and haunting as just being alert.
Jojo's voice alternates with those of Leonie and Richie, the ghost of a dead boy who was incarcerated with Jojo's grandfather.
They are hindered by hunger, sickness, the siren call of meth - which gives Leonie visions of her murdered brother - and the cop who nearly shoots Jojo when they are pulled over and Leonie has to swallow the bag of drugs she is smuggling.Ĭode Switch 'The Fire This Time': A New Generation Of Writers On Race In America Jojo, Kayla, Leonie and Leonie's white friend Misty drive to the prison in a multi-voiced odyssey reminiscent of As I Lay Dying. His white father, Michael, is in prison for drug offenses, but on Jojo's 13th birthday, right before he blows out the candles on his cake, the family gets a call: Michael's getting out. Jojo lives with his mother, Leonie, an addict, his baby sister Kayla, and his grandparents, de-facto parents whom he calls Mam and Pop. This town is a rich swamp of overlapping family ties, violent history, and ever-present racism, thrumming like a sick heartbeat through the lives of everyone in it. Like Ward's previous novel, Salvage the Bones, her new novel is set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage (wild or savage woods).
That oozing mud sticks to her characters: They dream of drowning, of rising waters and sucking mud. Yes, blood and mud are everywhere in Jesmyn Ward's Mississippi, a place full of ghosts and corpses, bayous and roadkill ("possums or armadillos or wild pigs or hit deer, bloating and turning sour in the Mississippi heat"). "The goat makes a sound of surprise, a bleat swallowed by a gurgle, and then there's blood and mud everywhere." Sing, Unburied, Sing opens with the slaughter of a goat. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Sing, Unburied, Sing Author Jesmyn Ward
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