Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn WardMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Such a powerful book, the ending gave me chills. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Their father, a white man named Michael, is just being released from Parchman prison, a place that is central to the story. Parchman is a place of evil, where men and women are treated less well than animals, burned alive for escaping or set on by dogs to be torn apart. Pop did a stint there as a young man, and the ghosts follow him still.
This book won many awards, most noticably: National Book Award for Fiction (2017), Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction (2018), PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Nominee (2018), Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Fiction (2017), Dayton Literary Peace Prize Nominee for Fiction (2018), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (2017), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee for Fiction (2018), Women's Prize for Fiction Nominee (2018), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2018), Kirkus Prize Nominee for Fiction (2017), and several others. It is easy to see why, even if it isn't an easy book to read.
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