Borrowed from CLP on 12/12/2023. A review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/books/review/tracy-k-smith-on-sing-unburied-sing-jesmyn-ward.html
My review notes at Goodreads:
Jesmyn Ward, b. 1977, Stanford BA, MA; U. Mich. MFA; grew up in DeLisle, MS (cf. Bois Sauvage). This (2017) and her second novel, Salvage the Bones (2011) both won the National Book Award.
An interview after her first NBA:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111122095732/http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/18/author-wins-prestigious-award-for-book-ignored-by-literary-world/
Reminds me some of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970), in its gorgeously rendered desperation of the time and place, and of the flawed but sympathetic characters.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5038610036
The chapter pattern:
J L J L J R L J R L J R J L J
Misty the white girl’s hair
Pop (River) the Black man’s stance
Mam (Philomène) matriarch and wise
Leonie unreliable narrator
Jojo (Joseph) reliable narrator
Richie narrator from beyond
spirit in everything
Mam and Pop tell their stories to Jojo. Pop’s about Parchman and Richie,
Sad, cruel, beautiful. Bits of sweetness and humor. Chunks of fear and recrimination, ugliness and bigotry.
Leonie is a terrible mother, by some standards abusive, yet she’s sympathetic in her own story. What’s that all about? She’s the most fascinating, if repellent, character in the story.
Could she try any harder to be unsympathetic? Yet Ward insists on a measure, however small, of sympathy. What about empathy?
Leonie has a capacity for compassion (Mam’s spirit) but cannot shake her core selfishness; she is sympathetic and understood but not redeemed, drug use increases after Mam’s death? What gives her sympathy? Only her own narrative?
Jojo’s selfless care for Kayla, admiration for Pop,
Jojo sees a white snake and a black bird guiding Richie - meaning? Then he sees a raccoon, a snake, and a vulture, ch. 15. He speaks of a need big enough to be a key.
Why does Jojo think it will hurt Mam to tell her about his abilities?
When Kayla sings to the unburied dead, does she send them home? Is Richie Included?
Pop tells Jojo what happened to Richie - hard but necessary for Richie’s sake (who listens in - I’m sure Jojo questions his father for that purpose) so Richie can go home, and also for Jojo’s so he can (continue to) grow up in wisdom and compassion.
Mam and Given achieve peace - is peace only available after death, and then only if those alive can act unselfishly? This is what I think: Jojo frees Given, who (together with Jojo?) then blocks Richie; while Leonie frees Mam to go with Given.
Yet Jojo insists Leonie did wrong by letting Mam go (ch. 14) - he’s not grown enough (yet) to understand.
Is Casper the shaggy black neighborhood dog also Casper the friendly ghost? Haha
