Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing

• Genre: Fiction; literary fiction
• Originally Published: 2017
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 840L; college/adult
• Structure/Length: 15 chapters; approx. 320 pages; approx. 8 hours, 22 minutes on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Thirteen-year-old Jojo learns what it means to be a man on a road trip with his mother to Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary where his white father has been released. At Parchman, the ghost of a thirteen-year-old inmate teaches Jojo about fathers and sons, legacies, violence, and love.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Racism; fatmisia; sexual assault; lynching; police brutality; drug use, abuse, and overdose; abusive/neglectful parenting; imprisonment; prison abuse; poverty; death by cancer

Jesmyn Ward, Author

• Bio: born April 1977; American novelist and Professor of English at Tulane University; first in her family to attend college; earned a BA in English and an MA in Media Studies from Stanford University; younger brother killed by a drunk driver in 2000; MFA in Creative Writing from University of Michigan; she and her family were victims of Hurricane Katrina, when their home in DeLisle, Mississippi flooded; unable to write creatively for 3 years afterward; decided to give up writing and enroll in a nursing program when her first book, Where the Line Bleeds (2008), was accepted for publication; two-time winner of the National Book Award for Fiction (2011 and 2017); only woman and only Black person to win the National Book Award twice; youngest person to receive the US Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
• Other Works: Where the Line Bleeds (2008); Salvage the Bones (2011); Men We Reaped (2013); The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (2016); Navigate Your Stars (2020)
• Awards: National Book Award for Fiction Winner (2017); Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner (2018); Time Magazine Best Novel of the Year (2017); New York Times Top 10 (2017); Kirkus Prize Finalist (2017); National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist (2017); Andrew Carnegie Medal Finalist (2018); Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist (2018)                       

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Guide:

• The Spiritual Unity of All Things
• The Violent Legacies of Racism and Poverty
• Caretaking and Selfless Love

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Teaching Guide, students will:

• Reflect on the usefulness of book reviews to develop an early understanding of theme and author’s purpose, and consider the ways that writers’ personal experiences influence their art.
• Study paired texts and other resources to make connections to the text’s three themes of The Spiritual Unity of All Things, The Violent Legacies of Racism and Poverty, and Caretaking and Selfless Love.
• Analyze the documentary 13th and analyze its themes to make important historical and social connections to supplement the reading of Sing, Unburied, Sing.
• Analyze and evaluate theme, narrative structure, symbolism, and other literary elements to draw conclusions in structured essays regarding familial relationships, intergenerational trauma, spirituality, and transformational love.