Sing, Unburied, Sing

Parchman (or “Parchman Farm”) is the Mississippi State Penitentiary. It’s located in northern Mississippi and dates back to the early 20th century; historically, the prison has functioned like a plantation, with inmate labor used to harvest cotton and other crops. This fact, when combined with the high rate of black incarceration for relatively trivial (or nonexistent) offenses, means that Parchman has often served as a de facto extension of slavery, with black inmates performing grueling and unpaid work under the constant threat of violence. This is certainly the case in the novel, particularly when it comes to Pop’s and Richie’s experiences of Parchman in the 1940s. Here, for instance, is Richie’s description of the reaction to River—a black man—being given the traditionally white job of training the prison dogs: “They didn’t like Riv taking care of the dogs […] [T]here had always been bad blood between dogs and Black people: they were bred adversaries—slaves running from the slobbering hounds, and then the convict man dodging them” (158).

Parchman is thus a symbol of the violent oppression of black Americans across the ages; Pop even likens it to genocide at one point, describing it as “Mass murder” (73). In this sense, it’s telling that Richie finds it so difficult to leave the prison even after dying, and that so little seems to change there over time: Richie’s memories of Parchman in the 1940s, his visions of “chained men” (186) clearing the land for the prison’s construction, and his observations of contemporary Parchman depict the subjugation of black Americans as a constant across history, changing only in the most superficial of ways. 

Animals and animal imagery are widespread in the novel: Pop slaughters a goat for Jojo’s birthday, a shapeshifting snake-bird guides Richie through the afterlife, Jojo can hear the thoughts of animals, etc. In fact, the motif is so pervasive that generalization is difficult, with different animals functioning in very different ways. Broadly speaking, however, Ward’s references to animals often underscore the novel’s spiritual framework. For many of the novel’s characters, there is no sharp distinction separating people from other animals; rather, humans are part of a much larger whole encompassing all of nature, life, and death. Here, for instance, is Michael’s description of his feelings while working on the oil rig: “[H]e liked working through the night so when the sun was rising, the ocean and the sky were one thing, and it felt like he was in a perfect egg” (225). This context is key to understanding the frequent comparison of Jojo and Kayla to animals. For example, Richie’s description of the pair “slumber[ing] like young feral cats” (185) is not meant to degrade them, but rather to suggest that their closeness to one another mirrors the overarching unity of the world around them, and their own connection to it.

On the other hand, as a novel concerned with racism, Sing, Unburied, Sing also uses animal imagery to depict the dehumanization of people of color. Here, for instance, is how Pop describes the experiences of an ancestor kidnapped and sold as a slave: “She learned that bad things happened on that ship, all the way until it docked. That her skin grew around the chains. That her mouth shaped to the muzzle. That she was made into an animal under the hot, bright sky” (69). He further adds that his own experience at Parchman was the same: Over time, he internalized the constant degradation of life as an inmate, losing the ability to “think” and caring only about his most immediate physical sensations in much the same way an animal might (68). 

Finally, it’s worth noting that certain kinds of animals carry additional weight in the novel. Birds appear frequently, often in connection with death; in the final chapter, for instance, Jojo describes the spirits of the dead as a “murder of silver crows” (283) sitting in a tree. The association between crows and deaths is common in contemporary Western society and typically casts the bird in a negative light. Ward’s depiction, however, is more complex, in part because death itself is not an inherent evil in the novel; rather, it exists at the same time as and in harmony with life. The imagery linking birds and death is therefore in keeping with, rather than opposed to, imagery linking birds and freedom—for example, Jojo’s description of feeling a flock of birds’ “excitement […] the joy of the rising, the swinging into the blue” (123). Birds’ ability to fly evokes the possibility of transcending the forces that seem to constrain us, including the linear way in which perceive time, which creates a false border between life and death.

The shapeshifting creature or spirit Richie encounters in the afterlife is an important but mysterious figure in the novel. Western literature, influenced by stories like those of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, has tended to depict snakes negatively, but this isn’t true of all cultures. In the novel, the snake appears to be a positive force, trying to help Richie escape the ties that “bind” him to Parchman even after death (191). More specifically, the snake’s color and behavior suggest an association with Simbi: a voodoo spirit who typically appears near water or trees in the shape of a white, gray, or green snake, and whose role includes conveying souls to the afterlife (often across a body of water). The spirit’s other form, a vulture-like creature, also evokes ideas of both death (as a carrion bird) and the freedom to travel to other realms (as a being that can fly). Finally, the juxtaposition of white and black in a novel so concerned with race is likely deliberate; the way the creature effortlessly slips between the colors serves as a reminder of the artificiality of rigid racial categories.

Because water is so necessary for survival, it’s often depicted as a life-giving force in literature and mythology. This is true of Ward’s use of the motif and her references to the Yoruba goddess Yemayá: a mother and a water deity. Here, for instance, is Leonie’s description of Mam calling for Yemayá’s blessing: “I knew she was calling on Our Lady of Regla. On the Star of the Sea. That she was invoking Yemayá, the goddess of the ocean and salt water, with her shushing and her words, and that she was holding me like the goddess, her arms all the life-giving waters of the world” (159). Relatedly, the novel often associates water imagery with caretaking, as in Mam’s description of how she has tried to prepare Jojo for life without her: “I hope I fed you enough. While I’m here. So you carry it with you. Like a camel […] Maybe that ain’t a good way of putting it. Like a well, Jojo. Pull that water up when you need it” (234). The image of people as bowls or reservoirs into which water—or, symbolically, love—can be poured is one that recurs throughout the novel. 

The water motif also provides a contrast to the dirt and heat of Parchman, which Ward depicts as oppressive and even murderous forces; at one point, for instance, Jojo wonders “who that parched man was, that man dying for water, that they named the town and the jail after” (65). For Richie, who suffers particularly from the sense of dirt “in [his] mouth so [he] can’t taste nothing and in [his] ears so [he] can’t hardly hear and in [his] nose, all in [his] nose and throat, so [he] can’t hardly breathe” (126), Pop’s stories of life near the ocean become almost as much of a lifeline as Pop himself (whose name, significantly is “River”). Richie comes to associate water not only with Pop’s love and protection but also with freedom, and dreams of traveling south to the Gulf when he’s released. 

The fact that Richie only does so after his death speaks to water’s final function: as a substance associated with the spirit world and the afterlife. Late in the novel, Richie has a vision of an idyllic land on the other side of a large body of water. This, presumably, is the heaven or paradise Richie has been trying to reach, and its location evokes other depictions of rivers or oceans separating the world of the dead from the world of the living (for instance, the River Styx in Greek mythology).

In the novel, food and feeding share water’s life-giving significance, but are even more directly tied to love and caretaking. The association likely stems partly from traditional depictions of maternal love; in bearing and breastfeeding a child, a mother selflessly uses her own body to nourish someone else. In the novel, however, this kind of love is often associated with male characters, as in Jojo’s description of Richie and Pop: “He steps closer and closer to Pop, and he’s a cat then, fresh-born, milk-hungry, creeping toward someone he’d die without” (220). What matters in these interactions isn’t so much the characters’ gender or biological relationship to one another, but rather the fact that one of them is in a state of total dependency on the other; for those unable to feed themselves (because of age, sickness, poverty, etc.), love can literally be a matter of life and death. Here, for instance, is how Jojo describes Pop preparing food for Mam, who is by this point unable to leave her bed: “[T]he gravy he made to slather on [the liver] pools in a little heart around the meat” (11).

Feeding also resembles caretaking in the sense that its effects extend into the future, providing those who receive it with, as Mam puts it, a “well” of nourishment to fall back on in hard times (234). This idea is at play in Richie’s description of the relationship between Pop and his grandchildren:

Riv hugs them even when he’s not in the same room with them, even when he’s not touching them. […] He sees that they eat in the morning: oatmeal and sausages. He cuts little slivers of butter and slides them into the steaming insides of the biscuits he mixes and kneads and bakes. The butter melts and oozes out of the sides, and I would give anything to taste bread made with such care (239).