Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sometimes you read a book and every page or so you are impressed by the profundity of a particular thought or turn of phrase. Not so this book. Kindle kept underlining passages that were “most underlined by readers” and I passed each one without a particular urge to stop and dwell on the selection.  It was a thoroughly engaging, read, though, made so more by the creative progressions, transitions of voices, and gripping exploration of life themes than by profound soundbites.

Sing, Unburied, Sing, starts from the perspective of Jojo, a 13 year old boy in southern Mississippi. He lives with his Pap River, Mam Philomene, mother Leonie, and three year old sister, Kayla. He is biracial, as Leonie is black and his father Michael, who is in prison when the story opens, is white. He adores his Pap, who is caring, protective, and occasionally tells him stories about his own stay in prison when he was young. Pap was arrested as a juvenile for being in the same location as his brother, who had just gotten into a bar fight. “Harboring a Fugitive” was a generous felony in southern Mississippi in Pap’s youth. Mam is dying of cancer and appears throughout the book as a nurturing spiritualist, who uses plants to heal, who senses spirits, and who sees visions. Jojo is not connected to his mother, who is a drug addict with occasional fits of “wanting to be a family.” Her drug addictions (meth and cocaine) are secondary to her violent and passionate Michael Addiction. They fight hard and love hard. She forgets about her children from time to time and then return and tries to be Mom. The end result is that Jojo connects to his Pap and Mam as parents much more so than to Michael and Leonie, and Kayla connects to Jojo, who cares for her with touching tenderness and responsibility.

Leonie is the second of the three voices that we hear in Sing, Unburied, Sing. She is the most unsympathetic, but occasionally we see what she wants to be and just doesn’t have the strength to attain. She loves her parents, she loves Michael, and she occasionally wishes she could be a mother to her children. She is jealous of Kayla’s attachment to Jojo. When she gets high, she sees the ghost of her brother Given, who was killed as a young man in an hunting “accident.” He agreed to a competition in which he, armed with a bow and arrow, bested other young men armed with bullets and rifles. He was shot in anger, but his death was deemed an accident upon the characterization of the white man who shot him. Michael was related to the man who murdered Given, which adds an interesting dimension to the love story between him and Leonie. Given appears when Leonie is high, a character full of life, joy, resiliency, and potential. He was the child of his parent’s old age, thus his name, and his death is the end of their joy, with the exception of Jojo and Kayla. 

When Michael finishes his prison sentence, Leonie decides that they all will be a family again and determines to bring Jojo and Kayla with her to pick him up. Together with her work associate/friend, and fellow addict, Misty, they drive several hours north to pick up Michael. This road trip is the bulk of the book and is utterly miserable. Kayla gets sick immediately, and there is a heartbreaking scene where Leonie decides to channel her mother and feed Kayla a mixture of herbs to help her nausea. Jojo doesn’t trust his mother’s ability to medicate, and gags Kayla after her mother feeds her the herbal mixture, to make her throw up the poison. Kayla clings to Jojo even more when sick, causing Leonie to be jealous.

Despite Leonie’s resolution to make a fresh start and be a family with Michael, they stop by Michael’s attorney’s  house, who also happens to be a meth dealer. She and Misty use and pick up meth from him, hiding it in a compartment beneath the car.

The final voice we hear is Richie. He was child who was imprisoned with Pap years ago. Pap tells Jojo stories about protecting Richie from sexual predators and other forms of physical abuse when he was in prison. He repeats the beginning and middle of Richie’s tale frequently, but never tells the end, leaving Jojo curious. Richie gets in the car with Jojo at prison when they pick up Michael as if he is finally able to leave some haunted past existence. Jojo is the only one who sees him. Like Leonie sees Given, Jojo sees Richie. Richie, unlike Given, is not happy, resilient, and carefree. He is sorrowful and haunted. He doesn’t understand what has happened to him and tells Jojo he needs to hear the end of the story from River. He pleads with Jojo to elicit that from River when they get home.

Michael drives home, he and Leonie euphoric in their reunification and determination to be a family. The only problem is they virtually forget about their two children in the backseat. Michael sees flashing lights behind his car and freaks out because he doesn’t have a license. He and Leonie make a moving driver’s seat switch and Leonie swallows the bag of meth they got from Michael’s attorney. The cop puts them all in handcuffs and points a gun at Jojo, who is trying to keep Kayla calm. Finally Kayla pukes on the officer, who lets them all go with a warning and disgust. Michael has to feed Leonie charcoal and milk and make her throw up to save her from the amount of meth she swallowed.

When they get home, Mam and Pap are not there, so Michael insists they go to his parents, who have always been hostile to Leonie and the kids because she is black. Michael thinks things will work out this time, but they do not, and they end up fleeing after Michael beats up his father for saying horrible things. His mother is much more sympathetic and comforts Michael, covered in his father’s blood, as he leaves.

They go back and find Mam and Pap home and welcoming. Mam knows she will die soon and asks Leonie to gather stones from a graveyard and pray to spirits on her behalf so she can walk through the door and not be in limbo on earth, like those whose deaths were tragic and violent. Richie, visible to Jojo, and Given, visible to Leonie, remain at Mam and Pap’s farm. Jojo gets Richie to promise he will leave if he finds out the end of the story. Pap tells Jojo the end of the story and it almost breaks him. Richie came upon an inmate who had just raped a white woman and was covered in her blood. This inmate was mentally ill and was known to be violent, so when he demanded Richie run with him, he did. River “ran the dogs” at that time and was shortly thereafter in pursuit of the rapist and Richie. They cornered the rapist, and the authorities murdered him in the most gruesome, agonizing way. When River found Richie, trembling innocently on the ground, he knew it was only a matter of time before the authorities finished him off like the rapist. Speaking words of comfort to Richie, he stabbed him in the neck and killed him quickly. Pap remained tormented by that memory.

Richie hears the song of the dead that are in a place of sunset, bliss, and peace. He tries to sing it, but his song comes out haunting and tragic. He wants to get to the place of bliss but he can’t.

Leonie and Michael don’t change much—still determined to do better but not enough to overcome their addictions. Mam passes away with her family present, as well as the ghosts of Richie and Given. She is tormented by the ghost of Richie, wanting it to be Given who leads her to the next life. Jojo orders Richie to leave, and in the end it is Given who walks Mam through the door.

The book ends with Jojo encountering Richie again, surprised that he has not left. Richie shows Jojo a tree full of ghosts who have not been able to go to the place of song and sunset—young and old who have been lynched, raped, beaten, murdered, and abused by people in power. Kayla sees them too, and runs to the tree and sings a song of innocence to them.

This is a book of love and suffering among Outcasts. Even Michael, who is white and the product of racist parents, is poor, drug addicted, imprisoned, and judged by his family for his choice of love. They all have ghosts that they see and that influence them. They are all products of their decisions and their environments. Jojo, Kayla, Mam, and Pap tug at your heart strings and make you grieve for the society and people who have made their lives unnecessarily difficult. Leonie and Michael are occasionally sympathetic but mostly infuriate you with their selfish responses to suffering.

This wasn’t a book of profound quotes. But maybe seeing people as unique individuals formed by their environment, choices, and the ghosts of their past is itself profound. Maybe entering into the lives of the poor and outcast should be a prerequisite to judgment and policy. Maybe we should just spend a little time with the ghosts….