Hello Meltingpot Readers,
It’s Friday, which means it’s time to share one of my favorite things. This week the choice was a no brainer. I have to tell you about Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. This book, if I may paraphrase Drake, has got me all in my feelings.
Flash forward to last week. I wasn’t in the mood to be depressed, but I was about to endure a two-hour plane ride to Wisconsin and I needed a distraction. Fun fact, Ms. Meltingpot loves to travel but HATES to fly and when I say hate, I really mean flying induces major panic and anxiety in me. The best way I know how to calm myself on an airplane is to get so engrossed in a book, that I forget we’re flying. I didn’t know if Sing, Unburied Sing would do the trick, but I decided I’d give it a try since I didn’t have time to go to the bookstore before the flight and it had been sitting by my bed for six months. So, yeah, there was a little guilt there too. An unread book kind of makes me feel bad about myself, especially if my Facebook consumption is at an all time high.
A GOOD BOOK IS HARD TO PUT DOWN
So, I started reading Sing, Unburied, Sing, the day before we were due to fly. I forced myself through the first few pages and wasn’t sure it was going to do the trick on the airplane, but I didn’t have an alternative so I threw it in my carry-on bag and prayed it would get better. Once on the plane, I took the book out before the stewardess could tell me to tighten my seatbelt and I never looked back.
Dear readers, Sing, Unburied, Sing, was that good. Because I was in Wisconsin for a wedding, there really wasn’t a lot of free time to read. I’d try to read a page here and there, but I didn’t get very far. Can you believe I was actually looking forward to the plane ride home because I knew I’d have two hours of uninterrupted time to get through this book. The novel is only 285 pages long and I thought I’d be able to finish it on that return flight, but Jesmyn Ward is such a beautiful, poetic writer and this story is so densely populated with textured characters, personal histories and exquisitely rendered southern scenery I had to linger on every page.
At its most basic, Sing, Unburied, Sing is about a family dealing with the effects of generational poverty. The family we meet is led by a stoic grandfather who is helping to raise his grandchildren because his daughter, Leonie, essentially is an unfit parent. She is a waitress, she has a drug problem and she is waiting for her babydaddy to get out of prison. The family is Black, but the babydaddy is white. The story takes place in modern-day, rural Mississippi and yet the past literally and figuratively haunts them all. Yes, there are ghosts in this story.
JUST BECAUSE IT’S SAD, DOESN’T MAKE IT BAD
Despite the fact that I sat in my office and sobbed as I read the final pages of this book yesterday, I wholeheartedly disagree with readers who say this book is too depressing and negative. As I wrote above, this book has me all in my feelings but in a thoughtful way, not in a way that makes me curse the author for carelessly trafficking in death and despair. (I felt that way about the book Precious.) Yes, every character was flawed in this story, and nobody got their happy ending, but the story felt very real and there were important revelations and cathartic release. In other words, the pain was part of the story but it wasn’t the story. And the characters all got answers in some way to their most vexing problems.
To me, Sing, Unburied, Sing is the kind of story that will literally haunt readers for days, weeks, maybe even months. The characters feel so real, I’m looking for them on the street corners and I’m checking my house for ghosts. The smells, tastes and textures described in the book continue to assail my senses, so much so, I can still feel the gritty residue on my tongue of something Leonnie swallowed towards the end of the book. But perhaps the reason why the book really captured my attention is because of the way Ward tied the present to the past and showed us how the sins of our forefathers continue to plague the living. Also, Ward explored with nuance and unvarnished truth what interracial relationships look like in the south when one is poor. She gave us an example of what white poverty looks like and that’s not a perspective that gets a lot of attention.
THE PERFECT MELTINGPOT MASH-UP
I think it’s pretty clear that I really enjoyed this book. It is not a feel-good read, but it does make you feel… a lot. And I appreciate that in any art form. If I had to describe Sing, Unburied, Sing as some sort of Meltingpot mash-up, I’d say the book was a cross between Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House but with a southern accent and some white people thrown in the mix. If you enjoyed either of those books, you should like Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Have any of you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment and let me know.
Thanks!
