![]() ![]() Pop often attempts to tell Jojo about Richie and what happened to him at Parchman, but repeatedly avoids telling Jojo the end because it is too painful to say out loud. The violence Pop endured and witnessed years ago at Parchman haunt him in his current life. While Sing, Unburied, Sing might seem like an archetypical road trip story, the novel discusses several subjects, notably: Black trauma, racism, and spirituality. ![]() It is also where Pop was once imprisoned with a young boy named Richie, both of whom have their own stories to tell. ![]() The story follows Jojo as he travels with Leonie, Leonie’s friend Misty, and Kayla, to pick up his white father, Michael, from Parchman, the Mississippi plantation-style state prison from which he was recently released. ![]() The novel focuses on thirteen-year-old mixed race Jojo, who lives with his Black grandfather and grandmother, Pop and Mam, his toddler sister Kayla, and his inconsistent, drug-addicted mother Leonie. I like to think that it’s something I could look at straightįrom the foreboding first sentences of award-winning author Jesmyn Ward’s most recent novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, we immediately know that the novel is about death but stories about death are also stories about life and their intersections. ![]()
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