Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times * WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, the story of a family on a journey through rural Mississippi, is a "tour de force" (Oprah Daily) and a timeless work of fiction that is destined to become a classic.

Jesmyn Ward's historic second National Book Award-winner is "perfectly poised for the moment" (The New York Times), an intimate portrait of three generations of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. "Ward's writing throbs with life, grief, and love... this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it" (Buzzfeed).

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn't lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won't acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister's lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children's father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can't put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the children's father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

Rich with Ward's distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic and unforgettable family story and "an odyssey through rural Mississippi's past and present" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

JESMYN WARD is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the author of the 2011 National Book Award-winning novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, as well as the 2017 National Book Award-winning novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. She is also the editor of The Fire This Time, an anthology of short stories, and the author of Men We Reaped, a memoir that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ward was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University from 2008 to 2010. Ward received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2016. She is a Mississippi resident.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781501126079
ISBN 10	1501126075
Title	Sing, Unburied, Sing
Author	Jesmyn Ward
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Scribner Book Company
Year published	2018-05-08
Number of pages	320
Prizes	Winner of Mark Twain American Voice In Literature Award 2019, Commended for PEN/Faulkner Award 2018, Commended for Kirkus Prize (Fiction) 2017
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.