Back to Blog
Unburied book5/19/2023 ![]() The rural South is not a kind place in Sing, Unburied, Sing, and the descriptions of its natural beauty are too often marred by the countless Black men and women whose lives ended violently on its soil. A kind of mystic spiritualism hangs over Ward’s world and characters, so when a sudden road trip drags Leonie, Joseph, and Kayla from their coastal home deep into the heart of Mississippi, the present and all its struggles never seem far from the brutal past that created them. Joseph lives with his Black grandparents - two hardened but caring strongholds of wisdom and love, both carrying a lifetime of sorrow but only one carrying cancer - and his 3 year-old sister Kayla, who seemingly adores her big brother more than anything or anyone else in the world. ![]() ![]() In Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward gifts us with the story of a 13 year-old named Joseph whose White father Michael is in Mississippi’s maximum security prison and whose Black mother Leonie is gone and high more than she isn’t. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a work of lyrical beauty on a backdrop of persistent ugliness and cruelty, a masterpiece in storytelling set in a world of narratives forgotten or ignored, a page-turning delight built atop a visceral and aching pain. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |