A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and aNew York Timesbestseller, 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 (O, The Oprah Magazine) and a timeless work of fiction that is destined to become a classic.

In Jesmyn Wards first novel since her National Book AwardwinningSalvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle,Sing, Unburied, Singjourneys through Mississippis past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the powerand limitationsof family bonds.

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesnt 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 wont 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 sisters lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her childrens father is White. She wants to be a better mother but cant 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 shes high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the childrens 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 Wards distinctive, lyrical language,Sing, Unburied, Singis a majestic new work and an unforgettable family story.

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.She is the historic winnerfirst woman and first Black Americanof two National Book Awards for Fiction forSing, Unburied, Sing(2017) andSalvage the Bones(2011). She is also the author of the novelWhere the Line Bleedsand the memoirMen We Reaped,which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi. received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winnerfirst woman and first Black Americanof two National Book Awards for Fiction forSing, Unburied, Sing(2017) andSalvage the Bones(2011). She is also the author of the novelWhere the Line Bleedsand the memoirMen We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publish Date: May 08, 2018
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• Type: Paperback
• EAN/UPC: 9781501126079
• Dimensions: 203.2 X 133.3 X 12.7 mm | 263.1 g
• BISAC Categories: Literary Fiction, Popular Fiction