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75 pages 2 hours read

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “Richie”

Richie marvels at Jojo’s innocence: 

When I was thirteen, I knew much more than him. I knew that metal shackles could grow into the skin. I knew that leather could split flesh like butter. I knew that hunger could hurt, could scoop me hollow as a gourd, and that seeing my siblings starving could hollow out a different part of me, too (185).

Still, Richie admits that there were things he himself didn’t understand at Jojo’s age. Since dying, for instance, he has realized that “time is a vast ocean, and that everything is happening at once” (186). This explains why the version of Parchman Richie sees constantly changes, even as his spirit remains tied to the place: Sometimes, he sees the land as it was before European colonization, while at other times he sees the jail in its current state. However, Richie never sees Parchman as it was during his own imprisonment, except “in memory, memories that rose like bubbles of decay to the surface of a swamp” (187). 

One of these memories involves a prostitute, “Sunshine Woman,” who used to visit Pop and the other inmates. On one visit, she told Pop and Richie about the lynching of a local black couple and advised both of them to move north once they were free. Pop refused, scolding her for telling the story in front of Richie: “[W]hen I thought about the way Riv admonished Sunshine Woman, how he stepped away from her to protect me, I began to understand love” (189). Pop’s stories about the ocean, meanwhile, helped Richie begin to understand the meaning of home. Now, watching Jojo and Kayla, he remembers the white snake waking him up that morning and telling him to follow them “south, to River, to the face of the waters” (191).

Chapter 10 Summary: “Leonie”

Leonie wakes with her head in Michael’s lap. He assures her they’ll be home soon, and she falls back asleep, “dreaming of being marooned on a deflating raft in the middle of the endless reach of the Gulf of Mexico, far out where the fish are bigger than men” (195). As hard as she tries, she can’t keep Michael, Kayla, and Jojo above water.

Michael suggests dropping the children off and getting something to eat. Leonie agrees as Kayla fidgets in the backseat: “Michaela kicks my seat again, and I turn around and slap her leg so hard my palm stings. Jealousy twins with anger. That girl: so lucky. She has all her brothers” (197). Pop isn’t home, however, so Michael proposes taking the children to his parents instead. This makes Leonie nervous, but Michael insists his parents might “surprise [them]”: “They made me, baby. And we made the kids. They going to look at Jojo and Michaela and see that” (199). They therefore drop Misty off and continue on their way; while driving, Michael swerves to avoid a wild hog, and Kayla hits her head on the dashboard.

Big Joseph meets the family at the door of his house, but doesn’t invite them in. Kayla fusses, saying she’s hungry, and Michael’s mother Maggie uncomfortably offers dinner. Before they can sit down, however, Big Joseph makes his disdain for Leonie and the children known: “Hell, they half of her. Part of that boy Riv, too. All bad blood. Fuck the skin” (207). Michael and his father begin hitting and wrestling with one another, and Maggie tries to break up the fight with a broom. Grabbing the children, Leonie returns to the car. Michael and his mother emerge later, hugging as Michael rejoins Leonie and the children.

The family returns to Leonie’s home, where Pop is waiting: He tells Leonie to go straight to her mother. When she does, Mam tells Leonie that “it’s time”: She can’t bear the pain any longer and wants Leonie’s help in summoning “Maman Brigitte […] the mother of the dead” to take her to the afterlife (215). Leonie protests, but eventually agrees to help gather the necessary supplies—cotton, cornmeal, rum, and stones from the cemetery.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Jojo”

Jojo feeds Kayla and puts her to bed, then returns to Pop and Richie on the porch. As Pop asks Jojo about the trip and discusses Mam’s failing health, Richie tries to speak to him: “You was the only daddy I ever knew […] I need to know why you left me” (222). Richie remains on the porch when the others go in, “rock[ing] back and forth, faintly” (223). 

The next morning, Jojo wakes to find Michael cooking bacon. He reminds Jojo of a day they went fishing together, promising they’ll “have more of that now” (225). Jojo is silent, but recalls what Michael said that day about his work on the oil rig: “[H]e cried one day after the spill, when he heard about how all of [the dolphins] were dying off” (226). It was also on this trip that Michael told Jojo the truth about how Given died. Michael overcooks the bacon, and the room’s smokiness makes Kayla fussy. When Michael tells her to be quiet, she grows more upset until Michael finally slaps her. Jojo intervenes, soothing Kayla and taking her outside, where Richie approaches. He tells Jojo he needs to persuade Pop to tell him the story of Richie’s death, and Jojo reluctantly agrees.

Back inside, Jojo feeds Kayla and visits Mam. When he tells Mam about Michael hitting Kayla, she warns him that Leonie is never going to give Jojo and Kayla the care they need: “I don’t know if it’s something I did. Or if it’s something that’s in Leonie. But she ain’t got the mothering instinct” (233). Mam explains that she’s tried to give Jojo the love Leonie couldn’t and assures him that he’ll never be like his mother. Jojo doesn’t want to worry Mam by telling her about Richie, but asks her where she’ll go when she dies, afraid she’ll also become a ghost. Mam thinks ghosts “only [happen] when the dying’s bad,” but explains she’ll remain close in a different sense: “[W]e don’t walk no straight lines. It’s all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies” (236). Meanwhile, Richie cries and sings outside. Mam asks about the sound, but Jojo denies hearing anything.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Richie”

Richie continues to insist that Jojo speak to Pop. Michael and Leonie leave to get high, and Richie watches Pop make dinner for the children; he finds the sight of the family painful and crawls underneath the house to sing. As he does, he has a vision of an idyllic land on the other side of an ocean: “The air is gold: the gold of sunrise and sunset, perpetually peach” (241). He also sees people who “fly and walk and float and run” (241), all while singing continuously. When the vision dissolves, Richie is left alone and crying.

The next morning, Richie sees Michael and Leonie return home; he then follows Leonie as she walks to the cemetery and kneels by Given’s grave. Leonie asks for Given’s advice before beginning to collect stones from the graves. Crying, she carries the rocks home and deposits them in her mother’s room. As Richie watches, Leonie reaches for Mam, who “looks at Leonie with so much understand and forgiveness and love that [Richie] hear[s] the song again” (245). The “scaly bird” (245) reappears and sits on the windowsill.

Chapters 9-12 Analysis

The basic plot of the novel centers on a homecoming: Michael’s release from Parchman and the family’s return to Bois Sauvage. By this point, however, it’s clear that home and family are often more of a fantasy than a reality. When Michael promises to take Jojo on more fishing trips in the future, he draws on widespread notions about what an ideal father-son relationship should look like. Michael, however, is no more suited to the role of parent than Leonie is, slapping Kayla only moments after assuring Jojo that he intends to be a father to his children going forward. The confrontation with Michael’s parents offers even more dramatic proof of the limitations of family. Michael insists that the biological ties linking his parents to his children will be powerful enough to override his family’s longstanding racism, but this quickly proves to be wishful thinking; Big Joseph not only insults Leonie and the children but shows no hesitation when it comes to brawling with his own son.

However, the novel isn’t concerned only with biological family or literal homecoming. The selfless love at the heart of Pop’s interactions with Richie not only causes the relationship to resemble a parent-child bond, but it also has spiritual overtones: When Richie sees the unconditional love Mam has for Leonie, he describes it in terms of the same “song” he heard in the afterlife across the sea. Death, in other words, can be a kind of homecoming, and not simply because it reunites a person with lost loved ones; those who reach heaven find their place within an all-encompassing and all-loving reality.

This suggests that Richie’s own difficulties in “going home” stem partly from his relatively limited experience with love. His relationship with Pop was perhaps the one bright spot in his otherwise painful life, and even that is now tainted by Richie’s belief that Pop abandoned him; he warns Jojo, for instance, that he “better watch out,” because Pop “used to look at [Richie] like that […] and then he left [him]” (222). In some sense, Richie doesn’t believe in the existence of unconditional love, as his confusion about the song he hears illustrates: “It is the most beautiful song I have ever heard, but I can’t understand a word” (241).

Meanwhile, as the novel’s spiritual worldview take shape, the motifs associated with it become clearer. These include not only song but also water, which (like food) is often linked to caretaking; water is necessary for life, so the act of helping someone to drink it (as Jojo, for instance, does with Mam) is a powerful expression of love. However, water’s life-giving properties give it mystical significance in many cultures, and the idea of crossing a river or ocean to reach the afterlife is an especially common one. Ward’s use of this trope also provides a clue to the identity of the snake-bird guiding Richie on his journey: In voodoo mythology, Simbi is a spirit who can take the form of a white water snake and functions in part as a conveyor of souls from one body or place to another.

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