There are times when you come across something and then you look at your life in retrospect and think how better off you are.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, a National Award winning novel is a must read. It goes into your skin and pushes you into a mesh of helplessness, makes you want to reach out and give these characters some solace, wipe out the misunderstandings, punch some sense into their head.  

This is about a broken American family. Leonie, a young black girl, hopelessly in love with a white man who is her husband, is deep in drugs, turned a mother in her teens and can't figure out what she should do with her life. She is the mother of two kids, Jojo and Michaela. Falling in love with Michael is probably what turned her life upside down. Leonie and Michael's dad's had the same father, yet Leonie's dad Pop was black, and Michael's dad Big Joseph was white. Pop and Big Joseph were never on good terms. Big Joseph despised Pop. Big Joseph was also the uncle of the boy who shot Leonie's brother Given; Pop's only son. That makes Michael the cousin of the guy who killed her brother. Yet she loves him. He isn't the man who is tainted, so why can't she love him? That's what she thought. That's what Michael thought. But the bad blood between the two families just got thicker. 

Already a bad start eh? 

Leonie got pregnant and had her first child, a boy, Jojo. Jojo was black; like Leonie, like Pop, like Mama; unlike Michael, unlike Big Joseph, unlike his white grandmother. More reason for Big Joseph to not like him. However Leonie's Pop and Mama never raised any issue. They swallowed the bile that rose in their throat, let Michael stay at their house and looked after Jojo and Michaela like their own children. They had no option either, because Jojo and Michaela's parents didn't look after them. 

Leonie wanted to be a good mother, but she couldn't. She hated it when she couldn't comfort her own toddler daughter, when her daughter chose Jojo over her. She felt like ripping apart Jojo's eyes when he looked at her with indifference and distrust, when she felt he looked at her thinking she was incapable of doing anything, incapable of being a mother. But she couldn't do anything to change that. All she ever wanted to do was snort Coke up her nose to think about Michael who was now in jail, and see her dead brother Given give her admonishing looks. 

Coming to Jojo. Jojo doesn't call his mother Mama. He calls his grandmother Mama. He calls his own mother Leonie, as Leonie; by her name. Not because he was taught to,but because he felt she didn't deserve being called Mom. Ever since he noticed the change in her, he shifted to calling her by her name. He even called his dad by his name. Pop was reserved only for his grandfather. For Jojo, his family included Pop, Mama and Kayla, his baby sister. Leonie and Michael were like add-ons he could clearly do without. Jojo was all of thirteen, but his demeanor was that of a much older boy, probably because he wasn't allowed to have childish whims thanks to his biological mother and more because he wanted to be just like Pop. He shared a beautiful bond with Kayla, short for Michaela. She depended on him completely. For her too, the family was just Jojo, Pop and Mama, but more of Jojo of course. Jojo was more of a parent to her than anyone else. She barely cared about Leonie, and had hardly seen much of her father. 

Pop and Mama were hardworkers and dear lovers. They both had a strong connect to nature, especially Mama. She could whip up potions and make different kinds of tea for myriad ailments, and they worked of course. Except for the time she tried it to fight cancer. The disease took the better of her, and reduced her to a wrinkled and shrunk up old lady writhing in pain. But she was the only one who understood her daughter. When Jojo told her that Leonie hates him, she said she loved him aplenty, she just didn't know how to show it. As for Big Joseph, well he got all hands and fists and jumped into a brawl with his own son when he brought his wife and kids to their home and if he had the chance to, he would gladly shoot Leonie dead. 

Apart from all these characters and their incredibly poignant descriptions, there is another thread to this novel and that is between Pop and a boy called River. This is something that I shall not open to the readers of this review, because it will be a test for you; a test of your understanding, a test of your imagination. 

Do give this beautiful novel a read. I am sure it will touch your heart in ways more than one. 

Note : I received a copy of Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward from Bloomsbury in exchange of an honest review. I would like to thank them for giving me this opportunity.