Like always, you’re welcome to respond to another student’s post or to discuss anything that interests you in the novel. But here are some prompts to get you started thinking:
- Discuss the book’s title
- Why does the novel begin with the goat-killing scene?
- In an interview on PBS NewsHour, Ward said that the use of the supernatural in a novel “has to make sense. It has to be believable.” Did you find the ghosts in the book believable?
- What do you think the “haunting” by ghosts represents on a symbolic level in the novel? What kinds of things are these characters haunted by?
- Talk about Ward’s choice of three specific narrators: Jojo, Leonie, and Richie. Why these and not others?
- Why do you think the middle generation in the novel—Leonie and Michael—seem to be the most troubled? Or maybe you don’t agree with this statement…
- Discuss Ward’s depiction of white characters in the novel.
- Talk about the ending—the tree of ghosts and Kayla telling the ghosts to go home.
The title of the book makes so much more sense at the end of the novel. Once Kayla sings to the dead, the title is almost their response. That those who are note dead must sing the histories of those who have passed and “sing” their own lives.
I found Riches’ story and Givan’s story so heartbreaking and well done. Having both of them in the novel make it a literary masterpiece. I liked how Ward used the supernatural to connect both of these stories together.
I am actually very uncertain on why the middle generation seemed to be the most troubled, maybe it’s to say that every generation does not come out unscathed. I do find Leonie insufferable as a character. A strongly written character but honestly– in my opinion maybe the antagonist of the novel (?) She is a selfish, hot headed, man-focused women who cannot help being a mess-up. I think this is a wonderfully bold choice while also infuriating me greatly personally.
I think that Ward used Ritchie, Jojo and Leonie as narrators for a few reasons. The first, in my opinion is that there are multiple different subplots happening all at once and these three narrators are the characters that can move through those storylines the easiest. I also think it creates a multidimensional understanding of the problems in the narrative. I worried about Jojo because what happened or what I assumed happened to Ritchie. I dislike Leonie because of Jojo’s narrative, I understood the multifaceted aspects of the character because Leonie was connected to all of them.
This book is beautiful and haunting. The love that JoJo has for Kayla flows off the page. He is her nurturer and protector and does what he can to shield her from Leoni’s erratic behavior. Leoni’s addiction makes it impossible for her to properly care for either child, and even the young Kayla knows this fact as illustrated by her clinging to JoJo instead of her mother. Both of JoJo’s parents are derelict, so JoJo serves in both parental roles to Kayla.
I think the novel begins with the goat-killing to remind us that JoJo is still a boy and to introduce the theme of animals and their primitive nature. JoJo has had to grow up quickly because of his parents’ troubles and his sense of duty to Kayla. But the goat’s gutting still turns his stomach. On that same note, there sure is a lot of vomiting in this novel! I thought poor Kayla would never stop throwing up.
The ghosts of Ritchie and Given haunt JoJo and Leonie, respectively. It took me a while to understand this supernatural aspect of the novel. But once I did, the story took on another dimension of complexity. The living are both haunted by and guided by the dead.
Ward’s handling of race in the novel is brilliant. At times, because Michael and Leonie are a mixed-race couple, we forget that the characters have different lived experiences due to the color of their skin. But scenes such as Given’s killing and Richie’s imprisonment and killing remind us that they occupy different worlds. Violence does not discriminate. Big Joseph is a mean, racist man whose anger has carried down to his son Michael. MIchael hits Kayla, and Leonie slaps JoJo.
As to why Ward chose to narrate the novel through JoJo, Leoni and Richie is a great question. I think it has partly to do with race and age. Leoni is white, Richie is Black and JoJo is bi-racial. Leoni has built-in privilege in society because she is white, but her self-destructive ways drag her down. Richie was wrongly imprisoned due to his race. JoJo is of mixed race, but he still experiences racism. His white grandparents won’t even acknowledge him. I think these three perspectives help to frame the novel by showing the different stages of life and reality. JoJo is smart and mature for his age but still a boy. Leonie is an adult who acts like an impulsive child and lives in a dream state due to her drug habit. Richie is dead but his presence in JoJo’s life makes him seem real – like a guardian angel of sorts.
I loved this novel. It is such a lyrical portrayal of lives that are both precarious and – at least for the older generation – deeply rooted, and of the unresolved (maybe unresolveable?) pain and horror of history. I’m intrigued by the quotation from Ward about the supernatural needing to be believable. A few of the articles I read discussed the role of magical realism and/or other supernatural elements in recent African-American fiction, saying these elements were particularly well-suited for stories of plantation slavery or Jim Crow for the converse reason: the “reality” of those times was so surreal or unbelievable that it can be best captured in surreal or magical terms. If reality can’t be believed or processed, in other words, how to convey it? We can hear Richie’s story from River and know something of the horror; feeling Richie’s pain and betrayal, though, is only possible through his reaction, through his ghost.
And then there’s the question of “believable to whom” – I’m reminded of the (I think?) Toni Morrison quotation we discussed earlier in the semester, in which she said something to the effect that what some readers called “magical realism”, she called “realism” – ghosts of ancestors, for example, would seem more natural than supernatural in many cultures. And perhaps that’s why they seem believable (to me, at least) here: I believe that Jojo believes. This isn’t a “ghost story”, with unbelieving and skeptical characters being haunted and terrorized into accepting that the ghosts are real. The ghosts are so well-grounded in how the characters interact with the world, what they believe, that they are easy for us to believe as well.
I have mixed feelings toward this novel. Unquestionably it’s engaging, and I like the idea, as in Tracks, of resorting to separate focalizations. Also, her writing reaches quite impressive peaks of lyricism. The juxtaposition between raw realism and magic realism is jarring and endearing at the same time, and I found this work a great way to handle the quest plot, displayed masterfully and with great originality.
However, I don’t like very much those novels in which I can’t empathize with the protagonists, and I found Leonie a totally unsympathetic character. Although she wasn’t the exclusive protagonist, the chapters recounted by her occupy a pretty big portion of the novel. She is a terrible parent—the way she treats her kids is downright unjustifiable— and the tragicomic aspect of it is that she even has the guts to be mad at the people she disappoints. Even her nastiness toward Misty, up to a certain point, is unjustified. I’m not quite sure if plugging in her version of the story added some meaning to it. In fact, she never comes to offer any clue about why she acts that way that might redeem her to the readership’s eyes, which is why I assert that she is not a sympathetic character. Of course, the way her in-laws treat her and the kids is dreadful, but still I don’t see any connection between being mistreated and mistreating one’s own kids. On the contrary, living in a hostile environment should be one more reason to team up with your family and to keep your family members —especially your children— in the highest regards. The only aspect of her warped personality that might inspire some compassion is her addictive personality disorder toward Michael rather than toward drugs but still, it’s not enough to fully redeem her. A detail that I found interesting is the vomit. There’s a lot of vomiting going on, and on two occasions, a character causes another character —Jojo to Kaila and Michael to Leonie— to vomit to get rid of something potentially fatal, which I found an interesting metaphor. However, I’m not quite sure what precisely it meant to parallel.
Hi Michela, I completely agree with your reading of the book and how Leonie, being an unsympathetic character and narrator, really stretched my ability to enjoy the novel. I read your post when I was slightly more than halfway through the book, and I tried so hard to find redeemable qualities in her. I still don’t like her as a character, especially not as a mother, but I think it’s interesting how Ward managed to slowly persuade me to see another side of Leonie as I continued reading. After she swallowed and vomited the meth, Leonie had a terribly vivid dream of her family sinking into the ocean, of pushing her family up so they could breathe while sinking herself; “I sink and struggle, but they won’t stay up: they want to sink like stones…we are all drowning” (195). Then, when Leonie wishes she could through up until there is nothing left and her body could be burned to nothingness, I realized that while I still don’t like Leonie, the character, or even find her particularly sympathetic, I can start to feel some understanding for the pain and torment she is going through.
I found the narrative shift between Jojo and Leonie throughout the novel to be very intriguing. From the very beginning, it is clear that Jojo views Leonie in a negative light even though she is his mother- he doesn’t ever refer to her as “mom” and neither does Kayla. It is also evident that Leonie views her children as ultimately a burden. While she loves them in her own way, the best way she knows how, she clearly has regrets about having children and feels that she is not cut out to exhibit motherly qualities. The narrative shift between these two characters, a mother and son, symbolizes the idea of lost innocence. With Jojo, it is apparent that he has had to grow up too soon and leave behind his childhood to assume the role of the parent for Kayla. For Leonie, getting pregnant with Jojo at seventeen forced her to grow up too fast as well. However, the difference in these two is appalling; despite Leonie being the true adult, she acts more like a spoiled child, resorting to anger and handling her problems in unhealthy ways rather than choosing to function as a healthy adult and a role model for her children. In contrast, Jojo is more mature, and this maturity grows throughout the novel as he even begins to understand Leonie. Even though he is the literal child, he is essentially an adult in a child’s body, willing to abandon his innocence in an attempt to go down a positive path despite what he has seen from his mother.
I agree with Michela that living in a hostile environment should only want to make you align with your family more. In Leonie’s case, she does the opposite, neglecting her children and choosing Michael and drugs over them every time. There never appears to be any desire to get clean or abandon her bad habits.
I think the “haunting” and the ghosts that appear throughout the novel certainly play a crucial role in Ward’s overall message. Essentially, Leonie being haunted by Given is her being haunted by her past and the possibility of what could have been. Given is always shaking his head at her, potentially indicating his disapproval of her current lifestyle and choices. Seeing Given’s ghost reminds Leonie of her past life, one before Michael. It’s interesting to consider that Michael did not come into the picture romantically until after his cousin killed Given. If this event had not occurred, would Michael have ended up in Leonie’s life at all? I think this is what she is struggling with, the idea of two different worlds, one literally with Given and one without, and one where her life does not turn out the way it has.
I agree with Ron that Ward is ultimately suggesting that violence does not discriminate. The racial images in this novel are powerful, showing that even children were and are impacted by adult behavior and anger toward those who are different, similar to the way Jojo and Kayla are impacted by the behavior of their parents. This once again correlates to lost innocence, with racism, hatred, and violence all at the root.
One of the most interesting things to me in this novel is the way food and hunger are portrayed. So much of the narrative focuses on Leonie’s inability to feed her children. Kayla spends almost the entire narrative sick to her stomach and throwing up while Jojo is hungry and not allowed to eat. I’m struck by the scene in the house of Misty’s meth cooking friends when Jojo’s throat is “a closing hand” and his stomach is “a burning fist” and he is surrounded by pre-packaged bulk food. This image is so startlingly different from Pop slaughtering and slow cooking a goat to feed Jojo. Leonie takes his birthday cake away from Jojo when Michael calls and tells him the potato sandwich he makes for himself is disgusting before leaving him alone on his own when he is too young to be unsupervised. She is constantly failing to give him the sustenance he requires, both physically and emotionally.
Leonie refuses food and drink from the first house they visit, and her first reaction is to tell Al that they are not hungry, rejecting his offer of spaghetti, relenting only when Misty gives her a look conveying her rudeness. She does not want to take from others, but refuses to provide for Jojo and Kayla on her own.
At the end of the novel, Mam tells Jojo that Leonie “ain’t got the mothering instinct” and that she first knew it when “she bought herself something to eat and ate it right in front of you, and you was sitting there cyring hungry […] she ain’t never going to feed you” (233). It seems like several of the novels we have read so far have dealt with women’s use of food as a tool, so I find it interesting that the absence of food and nourishment takes center stage in Sing, Unburied, Sing.
I think the first chapter in which the goat is killed is the perfect way to start a book that centers around death. To explicitly show the heat, smell, sound, and sight of death, we realize how much more horror is the death of a person. It is wrong, like the sight of a goat being turned inside out. It is disgusting, like the stench of the exposed stomach and guts. It is bloody, like the liver carefully prepared for Mam. In a way, I think it is responsible of Ward to start the book this way. Instead of seeing the ghosts as a supernatural happenstance, we see them after death as clearly as the still hot red heart of the goat. Death is not isolated or removed for the family, it is as real as the food boiling on the stove, the cancer eating inside of Mam, and the can that sliced through Jojo’s foot.
Amazing story – I wasn’t familiar with Jesmyn Ward and now want to read her other works. The opening scene with killing and gutting the goat was difficult to read, so explicit, and leads to Jojo vomiting outside (which becomes a through-line – Kayla’s excessive vomiting, Leonie vomiting after she swallows the bag of meth, etc.).
I interpret the choice of the goat-killing to open the book as kind of a forced close-up focus on the cycle of life; kill or be killed; kill to eat (survive); and also, the horrible and sometimes random disregard for life (which Blue, and the other shooting guards at Parchman) later exemplify. It is a gritty ruthless world. Because of this, Jojo and Kayla’s relationship is all the more moving; along with Pop and Mam, they stand in sharp contrast to all the violence and neglect by which they’re surrounded. Jojo’s spirit is so pure in many ways, his paternal care and protection of his baby sister comes naturally and surpasses his own needs and wants. He is the antithesis of his mother, Leonie.
The themes of hunger – Leonie almost never feeds the children – juxtaposed with vomiting are compelling and disturbing. The characters never get what they hunger for – except possibly in the final scene – and their bodies reject (by throwing up) all the toxicity they’re mired in.
The scene that stands out to me the most is the scene in which Leonie first talks about the death of her brother. This was really one of the first awful things that happened to her that wasn’t a result of generational trauma and had directly affected her more than seemingly anyone else. And the fact that River lived in a work camp and came out still being able to care for other people while his daughter couldn’t is an interesting depiction at how trauma can work. It isn’t always that a person will come out on the other side of a traumatic event and be worse off than someone else with a less intense traumatic event. And it manifests in different ways. River has no problem killing a goat but Leonie takes better care of herself and in some cases Michael better than she does her own children. I find it interesting but devastating at the same time. And I think Leonie connecting with Michael immediately following the death of her brother signifies his significance to her. He’s an addiction and acts like it. He’s both killing her and keeping her alive at the same time.