Jesmyn Ward's Eerie, Powerful Unearthing of History
<em>Sing, Unburied, Sing </em>follows a family—and two ghosts—on a road trip that doubles as a journey through the painful past.
Jesmyn Ward’s novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, begins with a young boy, Jojo, making a bold claim: “I like to think I know what death is.” It’s his 13th birthday and he’s helping his grandfather, Pop, slaughter the goat that they’ll barbecue for dinner. Jojo tries to coach himself not to flinch when Pop slits the goat’s throat or to slip on the bloodied ground as they peel the skin back from muscle. He’s desperate to emulate his grandfather, and this is his attempt to prove that he’s “old enough to look at death like a man should.”
It’s an emblematic scene. Jojo’s understanding of manhood is complicated by both the people and places in his family’s history. is set in Bois Sauvage, a fictional and
