Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Publisher: Scribner

ISBN-13 : 978-1501126062

Buy: Sing, Unburied, Sing at  Amazon

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

Introduction

 

I couldn’t put this book down.

I read it through in a single day, turning the pages like someone possessed. Jesmyn Ward’s story of 13-year-old Jojo grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Jojo lives with his grandparents in rural Mississippi while his mom Leonie battles drug addiction and his dad Michael sits in prison.

When Leonie drags Jojo and his little sister Kayla on a road trip to pick up Michael from prison, things get weird. The ghost of Leonie’s dead brother, Given, tags along on the car ride, and suddenly their journey twists into something much deeper. Past and present bleed together, exposing raw nerves of race, poverty, addiction, and generational wounds that won’t heal. The novel tackles weighty issues of illness, poverty, drug addiction, child abuse, incarceration, slavery, and racism.

Through Jojo’s eyes, we watch a young boy shouldering adult responsibilities in a world where ghosts aren’t just metaphorical – they’re riding shotgun. It’s a story about finding your way in a world where personal trauma, heartbreak and the ghosts of America’s brutal history refuse to stay buried.

The Book in 3 Sentences

• Sing, Unburied, Sing follows 13-year-old Jojo, raised by his grandparents in rural Mississippi while his mother Leonie struggles with drug addiction and his father Michael is in prison. 
• When Leonie takes Jojo and his younger sister Kayla on a trip to retrieve Michael, they are accompanied by the ghost of Leonie’s dead brother Given, and their journey  mixes with the ghosts of the past, showing the ongoing problems of race, poverty, addiction, family trauma passed down, and how history sticks around.
• Through Jojo’s eyes, we witness a young boy figuring things out in a world where the past refuses to stay buried, while dealing with his family’s pain and America’s painful history.

 

Major Characters

Joseph “Jojo”

A 13-year-old biracial boy, the son of Leonie and Michael, Jojo is one of the two main viewpoint characters. The story starts on his thirteenth birthday at his grandparents’ house in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. His mom Leonie is often absent and uses drugs, so his grandparents, Pop and Mam, mostly raise him and his little sister Kayla, who he looks after.

• “Better for my little sister, Kayla, to sleep, because on nights when Leonie’s out working, she wake up every hour, sit straight up in the bed, and scream” (Chapter 1)

Jojo and Pop share a close bond, with Pop acting as a primary caregiver and source of wisdom for Jojo. The old man tells Jojo stories about his his past, particularly his time at Parchman prison – hard lessons about resilience, injustice, and life’s brutal complexities. Jojo has the ability to see spirits.

Leonie Stone

She is Jojo’s mother and a drug addict who is frequently absent from her children’s lives. She is the other main viewpoint character. She became pregnant at 17 with Jojo. Leonie uses drugs (meth, painkillers, etc) to escape from her pain, especially grief over her brother Given. 

Her addiction becomes more important than her kids, making her unreliable at best and dangerous at worst. The promise of money for drugs drives her to make that risky prison journey to pick up Michael. 

• I bent to the table. Sniffed. A clean burning shot through my bones, and then I forgot. (30, Chapter 2) 

Michaela “Kayla”” 

She is Jojo’s three-year-old sister. He protects her fiercely, stepping into the parent role Leonie abandoned. Leonie calls her Michaela, everyone else calls her Kayla. Kayla, like Jojo, is able to see ghosts.

• …when Kayla was a baby, she got so used to me coming in the middle of the night with her bottle. So I sleep on the floor next to Leonie’s bed, and most nights Kayla ends up on my pallet with me, since Leonie’s mostly gone.(18, Chapter 1)

River (Pop) Stone

Jojo’s maternal grandfather who raises him. 

• But I liked most of the things Pop did, liked the way he stood when he spoke, like the way he combed his hair …, liked the way he let me sit in his lap and drive his tractor around the back, liked the way he ate, even, fast and neat, liked the stories he told me before I went to sleep. When I was nine, Pop was good at everything. (12, Chapter 1).

Pops was sent to prison with his older brother, Stag, when Stag got into a bar fight with some white Navy officers. He carries the weight of Parchman Farm – Mississippi’s notorious state prison and a hellhole of suffering and racial injustice. His experiences in that place left deep scars and continue to haunt him.

• When all them White men came to get Stag, they tied both of us and took us up the road…You boys is going to learn what it means to work, they said. To do right by the law of God and man, they said. You boys is going to Parchman.  (18, Chapter 1)
• Me and Stag was put in separate camps. Stag got convicted of assault, I got convicted of harboring a fugitive. (21, Chapter 1)
• I washed my hands every day, Jojo. But that damn blood ain’t never come out. Hold my hands up to my face, I can smell it under my skin. (204)
• There’s things that move a man. Like currents of water inside. Things he can’t help…Parchman taught me the same in me.(57)

Philomène (Mam) Stone

Jojo’s maternal grandmother helps raise him. She is Leonie and Given’s mother. She comes from a long line of women who can heal and communicate with dead people. She is loving and supportive but dying of cancer.  

• But this year, when Mam can’t sing because she’s sick and Kayla makes up words to the melody and Michael’s gone…There’s no happiness here. (26)

Michael Ladner

Jojo and Kayla’s dad, sitting in prison for drug trafficking as the story begins. He is white and comes from a racist family (he’s the son of Big Joseph) that doesn’t accept his relationship with Leonie or their kids. Like Leonie, Michael is an absent parent who also has a drug addiction issue. 

• Back then I still called Michael Pop. That was when he lived with us before he moved back in with Big Joseph. Before the police took him away three years ago, before Kayla was born. (8, Chapter 1)

Given Blaise Stone

Leonie’s dead brother whose ghost accompanies Leonie and the children on their journey. He died fifteen years earlier.  Given played football in high school and was thought to have a promising college athletic career ahead of him.

• …Given because it rhymes with your papa’s name: River. And Given because I was forty when I had you. Your papa was fifty. We thought we couldn’t have no kids, but then you was Given to us…(30)

At just eighteen, and a senior in high school, Given was killed in a racially motivated hunting “accident”  by Michael’s cousin. According to Michael’s uncle, the cousin shot “the nigger” (43) for winning a hunting bet.

Leonie only sees Given’s ghost when she’s high – drugs crack open the door to the spirit world and her unresolved grief.

Richie

A lost ghost haunting Pop’s conscience. Richie is the third narrator of the story and he struggles to understand and accept his death. Richie was just twelve when he was sent to Parchman in the 1940s for stealing food to feed his siblings.

• “I stole.” He shrugged. “I was good at it. I been stealing since I was eight. I got nine little brothers and sisters always crying for food. And crying sick. Say they backs hurt; say they mouths sore. Got red rashes all over they hands and they feet. So thick on they face you can’t hardly see they skin.” (22)

Something horrific happened during his time there. After another inmate called Blue was tortured brutally for trying to escape, Richie made his own break for freedom. When the prison guards caught him, they planned to do the same terrible things to him.

• “One of the trusties told me later they was cutting pieces of him off. Fingers. Toes. Ears. Nose. And then they started skinning him. (203)
• “They was going to do the same to him. Once they got done with Blue. They was going to come for that boy and cut him piece from piece till he was just some bloody, soft, screaming thing, and then they was going to string him up from a tree.” (203)

Pop made an impossible choice – he slit Richie’s throat as mercy, believing a quick death beat the torture the guards had planned. This secret eats at Pop throughout his life, only coming out to Jojo near the story’s end.

• And then I took the shank I kept in my boot and I punched it one time into his neck. In the big vein on his right side. Held him till the blood stopped spurting. Him looking at me, mouth open. A child. Tears and snot all over his face. Shocked and scared, until he was still.” (203)

After death, Richie’s ghost stayed tethered to Parchman, stuck in limbo. When Jojo visits the prison with Leonie, Richie’s ghost latches onto him, following him home, searching for answers about his own death and some kind of peace that would finally let him rest.

 

Secondary Characters

Big Joseph

• Michael’s father and Jojo’s grandfather. Former sheriff and proud racist. Big Joseph was present and supportive of his nephew at his trial for killing Leonie’s brother. 
  • Big Joseph is my White grandpa, Pop my Black one. I’ve lived with Pop since I was born; I’ve seen my White grandpa twice.  (5, Chapter 1)
  • …Big Joseph, the man who ain’t never once said my name…  (11, Chapter 1)
  • Hunting accident, the lazy-eyed cousin said in court, his good eye fixed on Big Joseph, who sat behind the boy’s lawyer, his face still and hard as a dinner plate.  (43-44)

Misty 

• Leonie’s coworker at a country bar and fellow drug user. They bond over their interracial relationships and shared drug use. She joins their road trip.
  • … she was high every night. Lortab, Oxycontin, coke, Ecstasy, meth.(29)
  • But at that moment, she’s my best friend. She’s my only friend. (32)
  • Our men are in the same penitentiary, so we ride up around once every four months. (40)

Stag

• Pop’s oldest brother who also did time at Parchman prison.
  • he walked all over Bois Sauvage every day, singing, swinging a stick. Walked upright like Pop, proud like Pop. Had the same nose Pop had. But everything else about him was nothing like Pop, was like Pop had been wrung out like a wet rag and then dried up in the wrong shape. That was Stag. (14)
  • He sick in the head, Jojo. And then: Don’t ask Pop about this.(14)

Main Themes

The Past Won’t Stay Buried

• The story explores how trauma passes down through generations like a cursed inheritance. 
• The fluid perception of time and life/death underscores how past traumas continue to linger and haunt the characters’ present lives.
  • …she told me I had the seed of a gift…“I think it runs in the blood, like silt in river water. Builds up in bends and turns, over sunk trees.” She waved her fingers. “Rises up over the water in generations. (36)
  • “Because we don’t walk no straight lines. It’s all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. (190, Chapter 11)
  • I burrowed and slept and woke many times before I realized this was the nature of time. (150)
• Pop’s experiences in Parchman prison shape his entire life and the stories he tells Jojo. Richie’s ghost literally can’t leave that place of trauma. Mam carries deep connections to spirits and ancestral knowledge. Given’s murder by racist violence literally haunts the family like an open wound. Pain keeps cycling through this family, refusing to heal.
• Big Joseph’s condoning of Given’s racial killing fuels violence and contributes to the cycle of intergenerational trauma. It enables systemic racism, fosters distrust, and contributes to a climate climate where violence, in various forms, can persist across generations.
• By labeling the racially motivated shooting of Given as a “hunting accident” (43), Big Joseph, as the sheriff, abuses his power to protect his nephew from facing the full consequences of his actions. 
  • ..he heard about it once his uncle came to Big Joseph in the middle of the day, the cousin sobering up …uncle saying: He shot the nigger. This fucking hothead shot the nigger for beating him…Big Joseph had been sheriff for years…Hunting accident, Big Joseph told them once they got back to the house and sat around the table, phone in hand, before the cousin’s daddy, short as his son but with synced eyes, called the police…  (43-44)
• Leone’s instability and inability to break the cycle of harm in her family are fueled by unresolved trauma from her brother’s racially unjust death.
• The condoning of the racial killing mirrors a broader pattern of unpunished violence and abuse within the families (Michael’s abuse of Jojo, Leonie and Michael’s fights, Michael’s fights with Big Joseph, etc), perpetuating a cycle of harmful behaviors.
• And, with such a negative role model, it’s not surprising that Big Joseph’s son Michael ends up a violent drug user, and in prison. The environment shaped by his father’s views cannot be discounted in understanding the family dynamics.
  • …and I think about Michael’s last letter before he told me he was coming home: This [Parchman Prison] ain’t no place for no man. Black or White. Don’t make no difference. This a place for the dead.(80)

Race Cuts Deep

• Racism is a pervasive force, shaping the characters’ experiences and opportunities.
• Big Joseph’s likely racial prejudice is evident in Leonie’s reflection about his reaction to her (the “nigger his son had babies with (28)”) and her children with his son and Michael’s statement that his father “believes in niggers.(47)”. And Jojo reflects that Big Joseph “ain’t never once said my name” (Chapter 1). 
  • We talked about our families, about his father. He said: He old—a old head. And I knew what he meant without him having to say more.(46)
  • He would hate that I’m out here with you, that before the night’s through, I’m going to kiss you. Or, in fewer words: He believes in niggers.  (47)
  • “Hell, they half of her. Part of that boy Riv, too. All bad blood. Fuck the skin.” (166)
  • And then I hate Joseph because he’s called my daddy a boy. I wonder what he knows of my daddy, how he could look at Pop and see every line of Pop’s face, every step Pop takes, every word out of Pop’s mouth, and see anything but a man. (166)
• Pop’s warnings to Given about white perception came true in the worst way: 
  • They look at you and see difference, son. Don’t matter what you see. It’s about what they do. (42, Chapter 2).
• Richie’s lynching shows the brutal history in vivid, horrifying detail. The justice system’s racism shows in how they jailed a starving child for stealing food, during the Great Depression: 
  • Richie, he was called. Real name was Richard, and he wasn’t nothing but twelve years old. He was in for three years for stealing food: salted meat. Lot of folks was in there for stealing food because everybody was poor and starving, and even though White people couldn’t get your work for free, they did everything they could to avoid hiring you and paying you for it. (20,Chapter 1)
• Even Leonie’s friendship with Misty is tinged with the differences between them.
  • But at that moment, she’s my best friend. She’s my only friend…But I knew this was her cottage, and when it all came down to it, I’m Black and she’s White, and if someone heard us tussling and decided to call the cops, I’d be the one going to jail. Not her. Best friend and all. (32)
  • The way she said it, take advantage, made me want to slap her. Her freckles, her thin pink lips, her blond hair, the stubborn milkiness of her skin; how easy had it been for her, her whole life, to make the world a friend to her? (76)

Slavery and Incarceration

• The system of Parchman Prison describes the transformation of the system of slavery into the carceral system. Parchman was once a slave plantation but was turned into a prison.
  • You don’t know the sergeant come from a long line of men bred to treat you like a plowing horse, like a hunting dog—and bred to think he can make you like it. That the sergeant come from a long line of overseers. (21)
  • I’d worked, but never like that. Never sunup to sundown in no cotton field.  (21)
  • From sunup to sundown we was out there in them fields, hoeing and picking and planting and pulling. A man get to a point like that, he can’t think. Just feel. Feel like he want to stop moving. Feel his stomach burn and know he want to eat. Feel his head packed full of cotton and know he want to sleep. Feel his throat close and fire run up his arms and legs, his heart beat out his chest, and know he want to run. But wasn’t no running. (57, Chapter 3)
  • Hogjaw did a lot of murdering, but when he came back, the warden put him over the dogs, over Riv. The warden said: “It ain’t natural for a colored man to master dogs. A colored man doesn’t know how to master, because it ain’t in him to master.” He said: “The only thing a nigger knows how to do is slave.”  (114)

 

Family and its Complexities

• The traditional nuclear family structure is absent. Jojo refers to his parents by their first names, Leonie and Michael. “Back when I was younger, back when I still called Leonie Mama…(8)” Though they care for Jojo and Kayla, Leonie and Michael are absent mother and father figures. They dissociate themselves from their responsibilities through drug use and imprisonment. Grandparents Pop and Mam raise Jojo and Kayla because Leonie’s lost to addiction and Michael’s in prison. 
• Despite her failures, Leonie wants to connect with her children, but her demons keep winning.
  • I am trying to keep everyone above water, even as I struggle to stay afloat. … I sink and struggle… I am failing them. We are all drowning.  (156)
• Jojo takes on the task of being Kayla’s guardian, protecting her in any way he can. And there is tension between mother and son.
  • I don’t want Leonie giving her that. I know that’s what she think she need to do, but she ain’t Mam. She ain’t Pop. She ain’t never healed nothing or grown nothing in her life, and she don’t know…Leonie kill things.  (89 – 90, Chapter 5)
  • He’s looking at me, and I see a flash of something I ain’t never seen before. He’s looking at me like I’m a water moccasin and I just bit him, just sank my teeth into the bone of his ankle, bit it to swelling. Like he would step on my head, crush my skull, stomp me into red mud until I wasn’t nothing but bone and skin and mud oozing in my slits. Like he ain’t no child of mine. (167)
• Leonie and her parents also live in tension, her choices widening the gap between them.
  • I wish he would call me something else. When I was younger he would call me girl. When we were feeding the chickens: Girl, I know you can throw that corn farther than that. When we were weeding the vegetable garden and I complained about my back hurting: You too young to know pain, girl, with that young back. When I brought report cards home with more As and Bs than Cs: You a smart one, girl. He laughed when he said it, sometimes just smiled, and sometimes said it with a plain face, but it never felt like censure. Now he never calls me by anything but my name, and every time he says it, it sounds like a slap. (37)
  • You always say the problem is y’all parents. Yours ’cause you live with them; his because they’re assholes. (76)

 

Love and Responsibility

• This story shows love in all its complicated forms. Jojo’s pure devotion to Kayla anchors the whole book. 
  • …when Kayla was a baby, she got so used to me coming in the middle of the night with her bottle. So I sleep on the floor next to Leonie’s bed, and most nights Kayla ends up on my pallet with me, since Leonie’s mostly gone. (18)
• The abuse inflicted by Leonie and Michael stands in stark contrast to the care and love Jojo receives from his grandparents, Pop and Mam. Pop’s presence and stories represent love as inheritance and protection.
  • Hearing him tell them makes me feel like his voice is a hand he’s reached out to me, like he’s rubbing my back and I can duck whatever makes me feel like I’ll never be able to stand as tall as Pop, never be as sure. (16, Chapter 1).
• His grandparents are a source of comfort and stability for Jojo; unlike his mother, their absence is rare. This contrast emphasizes the damaging effects of the parental abuse and the importance of the grandparents’ role in Jojo’s life.
  • But they weren’t there. It’s not often I can say that. They weren’t there because they’d found out that Mam was sick with cancer, and so Pop was taking her back and forth to the doctor….It was the first time I could remember they were depending on Leonie to look after me.(12) 
  • I sleep in Leonie’s bed now. I don’t have to worry about her kicking me out of it, waking me up with a punch to the back, because she ain’t never here. (219)
• Michael and Leonie are in a dysfunctional, codependent, but loving relationship, one that shuts out even their own children:
  • “Baby,” he says. I know he ain’t talking to me or Kayla, but only Leonie, because it’s her who drops her arm and turns, her who rises and walks stiff-kneed to him, her that he hugs, his arms wrapped around her like a tangled sheet, tighter and tighter, until they seem one thing standing there, one person instead of two. (103)
• And even Pops’ decision to kill Richie is seen as an act of love and mercy.
  • Until that boy came out on the line, until I found myself thinking again. Worrying about him. (58)
  • I began to understand that what Riv and Sunshine Woman did wasn’t an expression of love, but Riv’s standing in the sun for me was. (153)

Abuse and Neglect

• Jojo and Kayla are neglected and abused by their frequently absent drug addict mother.
  • Before she was more gone than here. Before she started snorting crushed pills. Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee. (8).
  • She might hit me. I did a lot of talking when I was younger, when I was eight and nine, in public. And then one day she slapped me across the face, and after that, every time I opened my mouth to talk against her, she did that. Hit me so hard her slaps started feeling like punches.(95)
• The abuse and neglect Jojo experiences profoundly shape his childhood and force him into the premature role of caregiver. During the road trip, Jojo steals drinks and food to feed himself and Kayla. 
  • I open my stolen bottle and drink the juice down, then pour half the other bottle into Kayla’s sippy cup. I hand one cracker to Kayla and slide one into my mouth. We eat like that: one for me and one for her. (75)
  • I let the saltines turn mealy and soggy on my tongue before chewing and swallowing so I don’t crunch. I am silent and stealthy in another way. Neither of the women in the front seat pay us any attention. When I eat and drink, I have never tasted anything so good.  (75)
• Leonie’s addiction swallows her maternal instincts:
  • Maybe because I want her to burrow in to me for succor instead of her brother. Maybe because Jojo doesn’t even look at me, all his attention on the body in his arms, the little person he’s trying to soothe, and my attention is everywhere. Even now, my devotion: inconstant. (82, Chapter 4).
  • “I’m sorry you feel sick,” Jojo says, and Michaela begins to cry. He rubs her back and she rubs his, and I stand there, watching my children comfort each other. My hands itch, wanting to do something. I could reach out and touch them both, but I don’t. (84)
  • It feels good to be mean, to speak past the baby I can’t hit and let that anger touch another. The one I’m never good enough for. Never Mama for. Just Leonie, a name wrapped around the same disappointed syllables I’ve heard from Mama, from Pop, even from Given, my whole fucking life.(119)
• Michael is also abusive. Jojo states, “Leonie did most of the hitting, but I know Michael could hit, too” (10).  He further describes the nature of Michael’s physical abuse: 
  • “Never with a closed fist, though. Always with his palm open, but his hand felt like a small shovel every time he hit me on the thin plate of my shoulder, the knobby middle of my chest, my arm where the muscle ain’t enough to take the pain out of the blow” (10)
• The abuse is a foundational element that defines Jojo’s upbringing, underscores the instability of his family life, and contributes to the atmosphere of hardship and resilience. It forces Jojo into a position of responsibility far beyond his years and shapes his perceptions of family, love, and survival.

 

The Importance of Storytelling

• Storytelling plays a significant role. For Jojo, storytelling, particularly by Pop, acts as a source of comfort, guidance, and connection to his past. Pop’s stories also impart important life lessons.
  • This is what Pop does when we are alone, sitting up late at night in the living room or out in the yard or woods. He tells me stories. (16)
• Mam notes that Pop’s storytelling is sometimes unconventional, as he might not tell the beginning, end, or middle in a linear or complete way. 
  • Your pop don’t know how to tell a story straight. You know that? He tell the beginning but don’t tell the end. Or he leave out something important in the middle. Or he tell you the beginning without setting up how everything got there.(56)
• Despite this, these stories are crucial for Jojo’s understanding of his family history and the world around him. 
• Pop tells Jojo about his experiences in Parchman, including the story of Richie, the young boy imprisoned for stealing food. These stories expose Jojo to the harsh realities of racial injustice and the brutal prison system. 
• Storytelling also functions as a way to pass down family history and cultural knowledge. Pops shares the story of his grandmother’s great-grandmother who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, connecting Jojo to the deeper historical trauma of his ancestors.
  • Once, my grandmama told me a story about her great-grandmama. She’d come across the ocean, been kidnapped and sold…She learned that bad things happened on that ship, all the way until it docked. That her skin grew around the chains. That her mouth shaped to the muzzle. That she was made into an animal under the hot, bright sky, the same sky the rest of her family was under, somewhere far aways, in another world. ..I knew what that was, to be made a animal.  (58, Chapter 3)
• Similarly, Leonie recalls her own mother teaching her about herbal healing and giving her a “map to the world” based on a spiritual understanding. While Leonie resented these lessons when she was younger, they represent a passing down of knowledge and tradition, similar to oral storytelling.
  • This the kind of world, Mama told me when I got my period when I was twelve, that makes fools of the living and saints of them once they dead. And devils them throughout. Even though the words were harsh, I saw hope in her face when she said them. She thought that if she taught me as much herbal healing as she could, if she gave me a map to the world as she knew it, a world plotted orderly by divine order, spirit in everything, I could navigate it. (88)
  • But I resented her when I was young, resented her for the lessons and the misplaced hope. (88)
• Storytelling reveals character identities and their understanding of time and memory. Richie’s ghost introduces a non-linear perspective, suggesting the simultaneity of time, and his memories of Parchman and connection to Pop show how trauma doesn’t die—it echoes.
• Kayla’s singing evokes emotion and memory, offering another form of storytelling. Her singing to the restless spirits at the end symbolizes hope for the future.
• Stories save us.They help us process trauma, preserve who we are, shape our identities, and thread past to present. They give these characters a map to navigate their place in a history marked by both unimaginable suffering and incredible resilience.

 

Ghosts Aren’t Just Stories

• Spirits walk through this world as real as flesh. The ghosts, particularly Given and the spirits Jojo sees, can be interpreted as manifestations of intergenerational trauma. 
• Given’s violent death due to racial prejudice haunts Leonie and is part of the family’s history. Leonie sees Given when she’s high: 
  • Last night, he smiled at me, this Given-not-Given, this Given that’s been dead fifteen years now, this Given that came to me every time I snorted a line, every time I popped a pill. (30, Chapter 2).
• These ghosts stay tethered to places of trauma, the past reaching into the present. 
• Richie’s ghost, a victim of brutality at Parchman, embodies the enduring legacy of racial injustice and violence. His restless presence highlights the lasting scars of this history as he clings to Jojo, searching for peace.
  • The boy leans into the window and blurs at the edges. He says: “I’m going home.” (108) 
• Mam speaks with spirits and practices traditional healing. 
  • That it skips from sister to child to cousin. To be seen. And used. Usually come around full-blown when you bleed for the first time. …And when she explained it like that, I realized I had been hearing voices, too…“Your brother can’t even hear what I tell him, never mind what the world sings. But you might. If you start hearing things, you tell me,” she said. (36 – 37)
• Pop explains it perfectly: “…when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it’s so awful even God can’t bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.” (Chapter 11).
• The fact that Jojo and Kayla, the younger generation, can also see these spirits suggests that this connection to the past is being passed down, indicating the intergenerational nature of trauma. 
  • I realize there is another scent in his blood. This is where he differs from River. This scent blooms stronger than the dark rich mud of the bottom; it is the salt of the sea, burning with brine. It pulses in the current of his veins. This is part of the reason he can see me while the others, excepting the little girl, can’t. (115, Chapter 6)

 

The Title’s Significance

The title refers to the lingering spirits of the dead, particularly those who suffered injustice and were not properly mourned or whose stories were not fully told (“unburied”). Their pain and experiences “sing” through the story, demanding to be acknowledged. Ward’s title suggests a more literal haunting by the past and those who have not found rest.

It’s related to themes of memory, the past, and the voices of those who have suffered or died, urging them to be acknowledged and perhaps find peace

The act of “singing” is connected to expression, remembrance, and a form of communication, particularly for those who are marginalized or deceased. For instance, Kayla’s singing brings relief and remembrance to the multitude of ghosts present. 

• Kayla sings, and the multitude of ghosts lean forward, nodding. They smile with something like relief, something like remembrance, something like ease. (225)

Pop tells Jojo stories repeatedly, his voice acting as a comforting and grounding presence, helping Jojo navigate his life. And Jojo’s own singing calms Kayla:

• Like I love to hear Pop tell stories, she loves to hear me sing. (19)

Similarly, Richie, as a ghost, exists within a time that is not linear, suggesting a persistent presence that might need to “sing” or express its experience. 

• I didn’t understand time, either, when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman would pull me from the sky? How could I imagine Parchman would pull me to it and refuse to let go? And how could I conceive that Parchman was past, present, and future all at once….that time is a vast ocean, and that everything is happening at once?? (149 – 150)

The “unburied” aspect refers to those who have died violently or unjustly and whose stories or spirits remain restless or unresolved. The old folks believe that spirits of those who die badly can’t find peace and are condemned to wander. Richie, who was brutally murdered, remains as a haunting presence, suggesting an “unburied” trauma and spirit. And for years, Given is tethered to the living world, released only by the death of his mother.  

The multitude of ghosts that appear are also “unburied” in a sense, their presence signifying unresolved pasts. 

• And the branches are full. They are full with ghosts, two or three, all the way up to the top, to the feathered leaves. There are women and men and boys and girls. Some of them near to babies. They crouch, looking at me. Black and brown and the closest near baby, smoke white. (223)

The title is a call for these unburied voices and stories to be heard (“sing”) so that perhaps they can find rest or be properly acknowledged.

Top Quotes

• Some days later, I understood what he was trying to say, that getting grown means learning how to work that current: learning when to hold fast, when to drop anchor, when to let it sweep you up. (57)
• Sometimes the world don’t give you what you need, no matter how hard you look. Sometimes it withholds. (87)
• Home ain’t always about a place…Home is about the earth. Whether the earth open up to you. Whether it pull you so close the space between you and it melt and y’all one and it beats like your heart. (148)
• The place is the song and I’m going to be part of the song. (148)
• I washed my hands every day, Jojo. But that damn blood ain’t never come out. Hold my hands up to my face, I can smell it under my skin. (204)
• Kayla sings, and the multitude of ghosts lean forward, nodding. They smile with something like relief, something like remembrance, something like ease.(225)

Conclusion

Jesmyn Ward’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is a haunting reflection on how America’s brutal past refuses to die. Through Jojo’s eyes, we see a world where the boundaries between living and dead blur, where ancestors speak, and where history’s wounds remain open and raw.

Ghosts walk alongside the living because trauma doesn’t die with the body. Richie can’t rest until his story gets told. Given appears to Leonie because grief mixed with drugs cracks open doors that should stay closed. These are metaphors for how our worst collective sins keep coming back to haunt us.

Jojo’s journey from boy to caretaker breaks your heart while giving you hope. His love for Kayla shines like a beacon in the darkness created by Leonie’s addiction and absence. Pop’s stories become lifelines, not just entertainment. Mam’s quiet strength, even as cancer eats her alive, reminds us that wisdom sometimes comes wrapped in suffering.

The novel refuses easy answers about race, family, addiction, or justice. Instead, it shows how these forces twist through generations, creating patterns that seem impossible to break. Yet somehow, through the hell of it all, Ward finds moments of tenderness, unexpected beauty, and raw human connection.

In the end, “Sing, Unburied, Sing” reminds us that some stories must be told, no matter how painful. The spirits demand it. History demands it. And maybe, just maybe, in the telling we find a way forward—not by burying the past, but by singing it into the light where it can finally, mercifully, rest.

Stories make us real.

 

Recommended Reading

You may also enjoy the following books:

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

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