Sing, Unburied, Sing

Racism is a driving force in the novel, but it often operates in ways that are systemic and historical rather than simply personal. Although individual characters like Big Joseph can and do hold bigoted beliefs, they are also products of a society that encourages those beliefs in order to preserve a racial hierarchy. The murder of Given, for instance, isn’t an isolated act of racial hatred. Rather, Ward suggests a parallel between Given’s death and the early 20th-century practice of lynching, in that both function as a form of terrorism meant to remind black southerners of their subordinate position. Given is shot because he “was supposed to lose” his hunting contest with Michael’s cousin, while victims of lynching were often accused of laying hands on white women—their supposed superiors in the Jim Crow South (50). 

Furthermore, this long history of violence against black Americans, though theoretically illegal, in fact helps to prop up more state-sanctioned forms of racism, including the mass incarceration depicted in the novel. The story of Parchman is inseparable from race. In Pop’s time, the prison routinely housed nonviolent black convicts—including children like Richie—alongside whites convicted of murder. This was not simply a reflection of a legal double standard that punished black Americans more harshly, but rather a deliberate extension of the brutality of slavery; according to Pop, the sergeants at Parchman were the literal descendants of the overseers who once drove slaves on plantations. The grueling fieldwork demanded of Parchman’s inmates was also the same labor once performed by slaves, further underscoring the prison’s status as a symbol of the persistence of racist violence across generations.

Even in the novel’s present, this violence is a pervasive force. This is perhaps clearest in the scene where a cop pulls his gun on Jojo—a 13-year-old who is “suspicious” only in the sense that his mother is black and his father is a former inmate. However, racism also surfaces in more subtly destructive ways, often in connection to the motif of poisoning and pollution. Although drug abuse is not a problem exclusive to the novel’s black characters—Michael and Misty are frequent users as well—Leonie’s drug use is intertwined with racism and the trauma of her brother’s murder. More broadly, the many ways in which the novel’s characters are poisoned or poison themselves—drugs, oil spills, the microwave “leaking cancer in [the family’s] food” (59), etc.—reflect the toxicity of racism in both a figurative and literal sense. The fact that society is at best indifferent to these threats and at worst intent on punishing those who fall victim to them, speaks to its basic hostility towards people of color.

The novel also (though less explicitly) critiques the violence of poverty and class structure over and apart from racism. Ward uses Michael’s story to dramatize the ways in which the working class—black or white—is treated as expendable. Michael once worked as a welder on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which infamously exploded in 2010. This event leaves a permanent mark both on the Gulf of Mexico and on Michael himself, who finds himself jobless and suffering from PTSD. Michael struggles to find work in an economy where traditional blue-collar jobs are growing scarce and eventually begins cooking meth to make ends meet. However, in much the same way that Richie was once imprisoned for stealing to feed his family, Michael’s attempts to support his family ultimately lead to his arrest and conviction: Poverty, like race, is criminalized in the world of the novel.

For all the attention it pays to violence and neglect, the novel also contains many examples of selfless and protective love: Jojo caring for Kayla, Pop caring for Richie, Mam and Pop caring for their grandchildren, etc. In fact, it’s precisely because the world at large can be so indifferent that Ward places so much emphasis on these relationships; caring for the most vulnerable when no one else will becomes a measure of one’s humanity, as well as a means of preserving it.

Ward makes this point explicit in her depiction of the relationship that develops between Pop and Richie. By the time Richie arrives at Parchman, the difficult and dehumanizing nature of prison life has taken a toll on Pop: “From sunup to sundown we was out there in them fields, hoeing and picking and planting and pulling. A man get to a point like that, he can’t think. Just feel. Feel like he want to stop moving. Feel his stomach burn and know he want to eat” (68). In other words, Pop’s mental life is reduced to a string of physical sensations; he in some sense becomes the “animal” a racist society views him as. Richie’s vulnerability, however, awakens Pop’s sense of empathy and thus restores his personhood to him: “I found myself thinking again. Worrying about him” (69).

The precise shape caretaking assumes varies over the course of the novel and can be both literal and abstract. Pop’s tending to Richie when he’s whipped is an expression of love, but so is his storytelling; as Jojo puts it, “Hearing him tell [stories] makes me feel like his voice is a hand he’s reached out to me, like he’s rubbing my back” (17). However, the most common manifestation of caretaking in the novel is perhaps the act of feeding someone; Jojo, for instance, is constantly alert to Kayla’s hunger and does his best to feed her when his parents are too preoccupied to do so. Characters also draw frequent metaphorical links between love and nourishment, as when Pop slaughters a goat for Jojo’s birthday: “I follow the trail of tender organ blood Pop has left in the dirt, a trial that signals love as clearly as the bread crumbs Hansel spread in the wood” (11). The significance of passages like this stems partly from the fact that feeding, like love, can act as a safeguard against future deprivation; in much the same way that a person might try to eat more in anticipation of a food shortage, characters like Mam try to “fill” those they care for with a sense of being loved to protect them from the worst of the world’s cruelty.

In this way, selfless love helps to preserve the humanity not only of the caretaker but also of those dependent on them. This is true even in cases where it may seem like characters are ultimately unable to protect those closest to them. Although Richie says that Pop wasn’t ultimately able to “save” (140) him, this is only half true; while he isn’t able to shield Richie from society’s violence and hatred, he spares him the full force of it by killing him himself, thus preserving a bit of Richie’s innocence.