Jojo, in turn, is haunted by a ghost named Richie, a young man from Pop’s dark past. But Given’s spirit only appears to her when she is high. Leonie is haunted by the ghost of her brother, Given, who died a violent death years ago at the hands of a belligerent white classmate. Their journey takes the shape of a classic road story, replete with Leonie’s failures as a mother, the woes of drug addiction, and Jojo’s attempts to protect Kayla from the family’s plight. When the kids’ white father is released from prison, Jojo and Kayla accompany Leonie, along with her friend Misty, on a road trip to the upstate penitentiary to retrieve him. Jojo learns about manhood from Pop, who is dealing with his own challenges as Mam slowly succumbs to cancer. She spends more time getting high than caring for her children, forcing Jojo to become the caregiver for Kayla. Thirteen-year-old Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, have been living with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. It starts as an unassuming family drama but ends as a profound invocation of the human condition. Jesmyn Ward’s latest novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, is a mesmerizing saga that infuses a contemporary road narrative with a timeless vitality and urgency of the likes of Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Jean Toomer.
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