Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward

There's a definite flow to the language of this book that takes a minute to get into, but once you get used to it, the prose of Sing, Unburied, Sing is really beautiful. And the story, oh God, the story. 

SUS is told from three perspectives: first, JoJo, a 13 year old boy who is trying to learn how to be a man from his grandfather, Pop. But JoJo faces challenges in the form of his barely engaged mother and his incarcerated father. This beautiful boy saves his whole heart for his three year old sister, Kayla. Oh, and his grandmother is dying from stomach cancer. Oh and his uncle, Given, was shot and killed by some racist Good Ole Boy because he shot a deer with an arrow better than this POS used a shotgun. 

So JoJo and Kayla are dragged by their mother to pick up their father from jail. On their way upstate, they are taken to a meth kitchen and a meth dealer's house, the entire time JoJo having to steal food for him and Kayla, otherwise their mother, Leonie would completely forget. And once they pick up their father, Michael, better decisions are still not made. 

The story of this family would have been enough on it's own, but Ward attempts to go deeper and further by involving ghosts in this story. Leonie is haunted both literally and figuratively by her dead brother, Given. JoJo meets a ghost in the form of a former prison inmate who was contemporaries with his grandfather. The boy was 13 when he was incarcerated with much older men. 

But in Mississippi a 13-year-old black boy is seen as an adult, as a threat. And this comes down on JoJo just as hard as it did on the ghost, Richie. And there's no resolution to this issue because this is America. But the journey of the story is well written while heartbreaking for all the failings of the parents and the despair of the grandparents.

4/5 Stars.