Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel Paperback – 8 May 2018

Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing", winner of National Book Award for Fiction 2017, is simply a literary masterpiece. Set in the American South, it depicts the past and present of Mississipi with a contemporary African-American family. Jesmyn Ward's writing style is stunning with lyrical beauty of words.The story revolves around the voices of three narrators: Jojo, Leonie and Richie. Jojo is a thirteen-year old innocent boy, lives with his maternal grandparents, whom he calls Mam and Pop. Mam is dying of cancer, and Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. Jojo has a younger sister, three year old, Kayla, to whom he is more of a parent than their mother, Leonie has ever been. He cares her sister a lot, and Kayla is more attached to Jojo. The kids mother Leonie, who is a Black lady, is a drug addict. She is lacking parenting skills and lives in her own way. Mam says Jojo about Leonie:“She ain’t got the mothering instinct. I knew when you were little and we were about shopping, and she bought herself to something to eat and ate it right in front of you, and you were sitting there crying hungry. I knew then”Leonie is waiting for Michael - a White, her children’s father, to finish a prison sentence from Parchman jail. When Michael is released from prison, she travels with her kids and a friend into the prison, Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. During their travel to Parchman and in the return journey, the novel chronicles the various stories and incidents through the narration of its central characters, which brings an ocean of emotions into the your mind.“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”, a character says to Jojo.Sing, Unburied, Sing is a brilliant tale on not-buried heart of the communities. Jesmyn Ward depicts the issues of race, injustice, and messy family set up with lack of parenting skills. The novel also depicts two ghosts: Richie and Given, to tell the story of injustice. Ghosts are representatives of injustice happened in the past, and it haunt the present.This book would be a great read to everyone who loves great literary books. With this book, Jesmy Ward, two-time award winner of National Book Award for Fiction, proves that she is one of the best authors in the world among the contemporary novelists.

She writes from the heart. Unusual but interesting.

I picked this book for three reasons1. Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist for Best Fiction2. The cover(OMG)3. Goodreads RatingsThis is the first ever book that I took without even reading the brief at the back. And was I disappointed? Damn No!Jesmyn Ward has woven a tale with a writing that is bloody seductive. I had no clue where the story is heading to and I kept wondering for a while, guessing possible outcomes of the tale in front of me.The tale of two families, a black and a white, where majorly the black family is our People of Interest is narrated by Leone, Jojo and occasionally Richie. The characters have been brought out to life in a subtle way that you don't feel are being forced upon since the book is not one with hundreds of pages. I particularly love how the author beautifully narrated the road trip. Each sequence so vividly detailed that you believe that you were on that trip yourself. The trip does hold a lot of significance in the story. It is on this trip that Jojo learns about racial discrimination hands on, gets to know Richie and feels/sees his mother-less mother to a greater extent.There is just one point that I could criticise, but that is so negligible that I would just let it be and moreover it would end up as a spoiler.In the end, this book is going to stay with me for a while and I'm definite that certain sequences from the book are going to flash before my eyes as days pass.

I was enjoying the book till the ghosts came along. That just put me off. This book does not fall under magical realism, and the ghosts are an odd presence in the book.The writing is good, and its a fair portrayal of a black american family in Mississippi. One can feel their pain and how oppression and trauma seeps from one generation into the next.This book was selected for a book club that i am a part of, and in the meeting I got some different perspectives on the 'ghosts'. Some members said the ghosts represent the past. And they are there because the author wants to keep the past and the present in one frame. Maybe, but definitely not my cup of tea.

Loved the book. Was in excellent condition. And got it for a very good price.

Gruesome circumstances force Jojo to shoulder responsibilities far more than a 13year old could take. The central plot of the book is about a road trip. A black woman drives down with her two children and a friend to pick up their white father from prison. A gut wrenching story.Kudos to Jesmyn Ward to wreathe a story around a drug addict mother, a father who is a felon, terminally ill grandmother, three year old sister and grandfather who is more like a father to Jojo.Sing, Unburied, Sing is poetry. It's art. Imperfectly perfect. A difficult read but very much worth it.

A huge thanks to amazon for delivering this product to me. I’m pleased.

Deservingly winning my as well as other's hearts and prizes.