Jesmyn Ward is already on the long list for the National Book Award though her latest novel, after NBA winner "Salvage the Bones," has only been out for a few weeks. This is a remarkable testament to the consistent quality of Jesmyn Ward's skills, the way her narrative voice evokes all the joy, heartbreak, and anguish of a certain southern time and place and people. In thirteen-year-old JoJo, Ward has given birth to a character so anxious and watchful yet so loving and selfless that you want to wrap him up in your arms and take him home with you.
JoJo and his baby sister Kayla are the mixed race children of Michael, serving a three year stint at Parchman Farm, part of the infamous Mississippi state prison system, and Leonie, an addict who is so involved in her own needs that those of her children go unheeded. But for Leonie's parents, with whom they live, JoJo and Kayla would likely have been caught up in the foster care system a long time ago. But Pop and Mama, steadfast grandparents who lead by example, are working through their own crisis. Mama is at the end of a long struggle with cancer, Pop is trying to be all things to all people, and Leonie is off on binges for days or weeks at a time.
Not a single word is misplaced in this tight little novel that toggles back and forth between Leonie's and JoJo's points of view, between the present and years ago when Pop was also at Parchman. There he befriended a child named Richie who, like oh so many black boys in minor trouble, were housed and used in the cotton fields as slave laborers. Richie appears as an unquiet spirit, still wandering the land in search of the answers to his death appearing to JoJo who, like his mother, has a sixth sense. Please don't be put off by the use of ghosts to speak of past atrocities. The trope works. The unburied sing.
In exquisitely wrought prose, Ward sanctifies the relationship between JoJo and Kayla. She is everything to him. She is his reason for living, the vessel for his love, and Leonie can't stand it. She is unreasonably, but not inexplicably, filled with rage over the state of her life. When Kayla screams for JoJo and only JoJo to satisfy her needs, Leonie is both relieved and infuriated. She intuits but doesn't admit that her children feel safer with each other than with her even though she yearns for some semblance of family with Michael and their kids.
Naturally race plays a central role here, Michael is white and his family refuses to accept his black wife and children. But more than the personal, it is the long view of the south and racial injustices that interest Ms. Ward. She fuses the stereotypical story of poor black families just trying to survive with the untold stories of the past that history would prefer to bury. Her ghosts speak eloquently of a time we persist in believing and hoping is behind us. Though we now know that it may never be behind us, Ward gives us a glimpse of hope in "Sing Unburied Sing" that she didn't offer in "Salvage the Bones."
I predict that multiple awards will be forthcoming for this crushingly beautiful novel. Grab it now before the holds list grows too long.
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