Reading Order
Sing, Unburied, Sing Reading Order
Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) is a complete standalone novel. It is her third novel, following Salvage the Bones (2011), but the two are entirely independent. Sing, Unburied, Sing follows a mixed-race family in rural Mississippi over a few days as thirteen-year-old Jojo, his mother Leonie, and baby sister Kayla make a road trip to collect Leonie's white boyfriend from Parchman Prison. The novel moves through present and past, living and dead, and uses the ghost of a Black boy who died at Parchman decades earlier to examine what incarceration and racism have done to Black families in Mississippi across generations. It won the National Book Award in 2017.
Where to start
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Complete Sing, Unburied, Sing Book List
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Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward·2017·Standalone — a road trip through Mississippi with the living and the dead, examining what generations of incarceration and racism have done to a Black family; National Book Award winner 2017 - Buy
Salvage the Bones
OptionalJesmyn Ward·2011·Ward's previous National Book Award winner — a Mississippi family in the twelve days before Hurricane Katrina; independent of Sing, Unburied, Sing - Buy
Men We Reaped
OptionalJesmyn Ward·2013·Ward's memoir about losing five young Black men in her community to drugs, accidents, and poverty; context for her fiction
Sing, Unburied, Sing — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Sing, Unburied, Sing a standalone?
Yes — Sing, Unburied, Sing is a complete standalone novel. Jesmyn Ward's previous novel Salvage the Bones (also a National Book Award winner) is entirely independent. Both are set in fictional DeLisle, Mississippi, but there are no shared characters.
Is Sing, Unburied, Sing magic realism?
The novel features ghosts — specifically the ghost of Richie, a Black boy who died at Parchman Prison decades before the main story, and the ghost of another character who died during the events of the novel. These ghosts are treated as real within the narrative. Ward has been compared to Toni Morrison in her use of supernatural presences to carry the weight of historical trauma.
What is Parchman Prison's significance in Sing, Unburied, Sing?
Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary) has a specific history as a prison plantation where Black inmates were leased as farm labor well into the 20th century. Ward uses Parchman as a physical site where the history of slavery persists into the present — the ghost of Richie, who died there decades earlier, is still trapped on the grounds, unable to leave. The novel connects present-day incarceration to this history.
What is the road trip in Sing, Unburied, Sing?
Leonie, her son Jojo, and baby daughter Kayla drive from their rural Mississippi home to Parchman Prison to collect Leonie's boyfriend Michael on his release. The road trip takes them through a Mississippi landscape layered with racial history; the children see things Leonie cannot, and the ghost of Richie joins them for the return journey.
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