“Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward Free Essay Example

In Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, trauma is represented as a manifested illness for both the dead and the living. Ever-present, its trail connects the characters’ experiences into a multi-narrative story which Jojo, a thirteen-year-old boy, his family, and Richie, a tethered spirit, share. Set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, the story centers on the characters’ trip to Parchman Farm penitentiary to retrieve Jojo’s white father, Michael. One after another, events begin to gradually devolve, revealing each character’s afflictions to the core.

Toxic and transfusable, each character’s illness collectively stems from their environment. Episodically thematic, vomiting occurs in correlation to a creole belief regarding one’s spirit being expunged through regurgitation. Burdened, the majority of characters vomit their individual maladies: Jojo, with his forced maturation, Kayla, Jojo’s sister, with her mistreatment, Leonie, their mother, with her grief, and Richie, with his subjugating imprisonment at Parchman. Shared in suffering, trauma’s residual effects seep through cracks of generations and leave future ones relying on each other for healing.

The biracial son of Leonie and Michael, Jojo is unusually solemn and developed for his age. With a drug-addicted mother and an imprisoned father with racist familial ties, Jojo’s predicament forces him to mature early. This is seen through his role of a surrogate parent to Michaela, whom he calls Kayla, and through his admiration for his grandfather, River, whom he calls ‘Pop’. Opening the story, insight is given to Jojo’s manifested illness when accompanying River to slaughter a goat in preparation for a meal:

I follow Pop out the house trying to keep my back straight, my shoulders even as a hanger; that’s how Pop walks.

I try to look like this is normal and boring so Pop will think I’ve earned these thirteen years, so Pop will know I’m ready to pull what needs to be pulled, separate innards from muscle, organs from cavities. I want Pop to know I can get bloody. Today’s my birthday. (1)

Willing to participate in visceral disembowelment, Jojo naively perceives that through emulating Pop and acting untroubled, the label of manhood would be bestowed upon him. ‘I don’t want him to read my slowness as fear, as weakness, as me not being old enough to look at death like a man should'(3). Brown skinned tinged with red and family oriented, Jojo’s ideal male paragon is his grandfather. A substitute parent to both Jojo and Kayla, Pop is a compassionate and selfless influence on Jojo’s care for his sister. Possessing an almost telepathic bond, Jojo and his sister are effectively ‘each other’s light’ (92). He can tell she’s ‘her animal self’ in his arms and she can always count on him to let her be in them. (68) Although very responsible of him, this overdevelopment contributes to his illness, as he is still an adolescent. Leering at Leonie’s friend, Misty, Jojo shows a sexual curiosity just like any other boy his age. ‘Misty’s shirt, which is cut wide and loose around the neckline, stretches out even more so that the top of her bra peeks through”.(37) Susceptible, Jojo’s innocence is further shown in his near-fatal encounter with a police officer: ‘It’s easy to look at him, his weedy height, the thick spread of his belly, and think he’s grown. But he’s just a baby’. (99) Unsurprisingly then, Jojo pukes when the goat’s death overwhelms him, symbolizing that despite his maturity, he is still too young for its demands.

Leonie’s relation to both Jojo and Kayla naturally passes down her illness to her offspring. Traumatized by her brother, Given, dying of a hate crime, she is rendered unable to cope and be a maternal figure. Her champion, Given, had buffered the toxic hostility of their prejudiced community for her. ‘I couldn’t count how many times he fought for us on the bus, in school, in the neighborhood when kids taunted me'(22-23). Vulnerable and grief-stricken, she possesses an illness which could be detected from her substance abuse, self-absorption, and guilt of letting everyone down.

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 Given, my whole fucking life. (89)

This illness is clear through her prioritizing destructive self-interests and having deliriums of Given’s disapproving specter. For example, Leonie sees Given when neglecting her kids and taking meth. ‘Standing outside of the hallway to the kids’ room’, Given-not-Given’s demeanor is that of disappointment, expressing only ‘a soft frown’ (91). Consequently, her illness not only affects herself but her kids as well. Forced to rely on each other, Jojo and Kayla develop a relationship which virtually negates her presence:

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. (62)

Although largely beneficial, their relationship is a necessity due to Leonie’s lack of maternal instinct. This maternal absence results in intergenerational trauma, as Kayla develops her own illness, which ensues from Leonie’s mistreatment. In a vehicle in which her mother and Misty are smuggling drugs, Kayla incessantly expunges herself of her toxic environment through vomiting. This idea is further substantiated when Leonie cannot even provide a means of comfort or a solution. ‘She vomits again, blinking at me when I stand inside the car door with more electrolytes’. (62) Emblematic, Kayla regurgitates her mother’s incorrectly suggested Powerade in order to free herself of the trauma of Leonie being maternally unfit. Unaware, Leonie attempts to brew a concoction filled with curative herbs suggested by her mother, Philomene. Unfortunately, she proves once again incapable as Kayla also spews that out. As Jojo recounts, ‘ she ain’t never healed nothing or grown nothing in her life ‘ but instead ‘Leonie kill things’. (66)(67) Ironically, Leonie’s self-absorption and drug use almost get Jojo killed himself. When terry-stopped by a police officer, she swallows a bag of meth and is rendered powerless to a gun being pointed in her son’s face. It is not until she regurgitates her burden (symbolically represented by drugs) that Leonie starts exhibiting motherly traits. Upon confronting Michael’s parents, Leonie and Michael attempt to gain their acceptance of her and her children. Unable, they instead separate with Michael childishly pummeling his father and Leonie and her kids departing hand in hand. ‘I want to go back and help Michael, I don’t. I open the door and pull Jojo and Michaela. ‘ (127) Vomiting out her illness, Leonie finally overcomes her selfish desires. Instead of remaining, she decides that the brutal racism and violent skirmishing were too much. In doing this, she finally shows the capability of overcoming her grief and the potential of her being a good mother.

Transcending time, Richie’s manifested illness captures the dark history of the South while simultaneously paralleling Jojo’s. Recounted to Jojo by Richie’s spirit and Pop, the two relay Richie’s time at Parchman when he was alive. Reminiscent of a slave plantation, Parchman Farm is a labor institution,whose origin shows profound subjugation and glaringly biased structure. With ‘trees flat’ and ‘open to the ends of the earth’, its deceptive nature practices self- conditioning. (13) As Pop states, ‘Parchman the kind of place that fool you into thinking it ain’t no prison, ain’t going to be so bad when you first see it, because ain’t no walls’. (13) Inherently racist, it embodies the violent paradox of the criminal justice system. A hierarchical order of sergeants, ‘trusty shooters’, and ‘gunmen’, Parchman authorizes white murderers into positions of power. White inmates such as Kinnie and Hogjaw are always in charge of dogs and hunting runaways, resembling an order of power identical to slavery. This is greatly highlighted when Pop, a natural caretaker, is replaced by a less suited Hogjaw. Explaining this, the warden simply states ‘a colored man don’t know how to master because it ain’t in him to master’. (85) This is also further shown when Kennie escapes with ease. Having been nurtured and brought up by Kennie, the patrol dogs are unable to pursue him due to his familiar scent. Indicative of white impunity, Kennie’s escape shows how easy it was for people like him to avoid the law. Unfortunately, this didn’t apply to young, poverty-stricken black boys like Richie. Sent at twelve years old to Parchman for stealing salted meat for his siblings, he like Jojo was a victim of his circumstance. He had lacked basic necessities and a result of his race and class was forced to mature. An adolescent, he exhibited young and naive characteristics, having ‘a big head shaped like an onion’ and relishing his name’s condescending wordplay. (14)

What’s your name boy? Richard. Everybody call me Richie for short. Like it’s a joke. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised and a little smile on his face, so small it was only his mouth opening to show his teeth, white and crowding. I didn’t get the joke, so he slumped and explained with his spoon. Cause I be stealing. So I’m rich? I look down at my hands. Crumb-clean and still felt like I hadn’t eaten. it’s a joke, he said. So I gave Richie what he wanted. He was a boy. I laughed. (15)

Because he was so young, Richie was in no way, shape, or form prepared for the horrors and vigorous labor at Parchman. He ‘didn’t have enough years in his arms for muscle’, or the necessary experience for survival. (45-46) Pop, on the other hand, was built for labor. He was sturdy and knew that in Parchman’s scorching heat and oppressive nature, a man shouldn’t ‘think, just feel’. (45) This wasn’t the same for Richie as when forced into the long line, he breaks his hoe and is mercilessly whipped for it. Scarred and taken aback, he can’t help but think of his depraved and dirt-filled environment. ‘I dream about it. Dream I’m eating it with a long silver spoon.’ (77) Traumatized, he throws up and exclaims ‘ I’m going home’, expunging himself and deciding that he was leaving for a place where he could be what he was, a boy. Sadly, he never gets the chance, dying in the most tragic form. Having escaped with Blue, an inmate who murdered and raped women, Richie is chased through the woods by a bloodthirsty mob. Lynching and dismembering Blue first, the crowd then turn their attention to Richie. Viewing all this, Pop is then faced with a heartbreaking ultimatum in which he saves Richie from an appalling fate but by killing him out of mercy. This in turn also scars Pop who quiveringly recounting Richie’s death, is shaken. Never allowed to be a kid freed from racism and poverty, or know the unjust nature of his death, Richie is tethered in a liminal state. It is only when Pop tells him the matter of his death, his ill-fated life is cleansed and he is allowed to transition into the afterlife.

The grim world of Sing, Unburied, Sing is very much like our own-containing devastating trauma in which the past, present, and future, share. Characters are very much like that of reality, possessing illnesses manifested in everyday life. The novel’s grasp of Creole religion and America’s ugly truths are truly penetrating and awe-inspiring due to its insightful coverage of many topics. Its characters’ road trip transitions into a more universal story united by the ideal life of an African American in the rural South. The nature of continued suffering throughout generations is both harsh and accurate. From a young modern black boy in Jojo to one in previous decades like Richie, Ward creates a story in which trauma has an everlasting effect. Whether seen through the elderly Pop, or fledgling toddler, Kayla, the living and the dead confront racism and its handprint on their history through real-life experiences.