Meeting followup by Deb:

As everyone has noted, a wonderful and well timed, lovely evening together, comfortable & tasty on all levels, Jessica: thank you!   Such a good feeling to have six of us comfortably gathered around a grand new table in such a welcoming colorful chirp-happy yard to take up Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing!

—so a few thoughts sifted from our conversation, agreeing that before we disperse next time each person might offer a blurt/blurb/bit to pin to our monthly book report? —additions, edits welcome now, including input from you absent adventurers, too.’ massively misguided painful decisions—w/parallels to prohibition noted—and the extraordinary strength of Cassidy Hutchinson, barely 23 when she was taking in the Oval Rm January-6 events,  we segued from her disclosures of the day to our book, SING. We noted its closing with the youngest child of the book’s three generations, wee Kayla, holding vision, voice, singing the Unburied home—an uplift in the bleak narrative of our country’s injustices, pretense of equality with the end of slavery . . . straying—delving!—into the ongoing strings . . . Relevant.

Noting the narrative weaves in time—past & present (assisted by the dead—Given & Richie), we explored the impact of the multiple voices, which sometimes seemed problematic + generated curiosity about how the story would read from an omniscient viewpoint—observing that probably Ward would be effective from that perspective, too. What we wouldn’t want to lose is the powerful attachment achieved by beginning with JoJo on his 13th b’day when Pop slaughters a goat to cook up for dinner—with JoJo’s help keenly detailed.  Within very few pages we love Jojo, sense his importance to the narrative, his family, little sis Kayla—Michaela (Michael & Leona’s 2^nd child). We plunge into a tangle of relationships among characters we come to know through varied view-points, raising questions about the coherence of addicts (& how tough it is), & thoughts on artist-writers’ license & Ward’s command (+experience with car-sickness & vomit, mother of two!).

A reviewer notes parallels w/Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which led to talk about other echoes that Ward acknowledges, including the Odyssey—two tempting trouble-coated sirens bearing Michael home [road-trip reworked from prison now], this a book Ward researched seriously, covering history & places she had not known & now would etch for us—like Parchman Farm, the “work-camp” Pen. She achieves her goals, we seem to agree (although Salvage the Bones might be stronger yet + tougher to read? And Men We Reaped, her memoir offers another personal perspective on racism).  Also, Ward credits her editor as prompter to give voice to 12-yr-old Parchman prisoner Richie as one of the narrators: bring back the dead + bury the dead!  This is not unrelated to vomit, which we also discussed after dinner: throwing up the past, which doesn’t swallow-down digest easy.  [Also, worth adding is that the importance of Pop to Richie went the other way, too (p. 69): that Pop, like his great grandmama was “made a animal.  Until that boy came out on the line until I found myself thinking again.  Worrying about him. Looking out the corner of my eye at him lagging crooked like a ant that’s lost scent.”]  —a reminder that not only is Ward able to drive a strong narrative, but is poetic: P279: “Kayla patted his arm again, but she didn’t ask for another pecan.  Just rubbed him like Pop was a puppy, flea-itching and half-bald, starved for love.”   or 253 in a Jojo Chapter when Pop is providing the “end” to Richie’s story: “He is balanced on his toes, and he could be made of stone. But every part of Pop moves: his hands as he speaks, his shoulders folding forward as softly as a flower wilting at the hottest part of the day.  I’ve never seen them do that.  His face, all the lines of his face, sliding against each other like the fault lines of the great fractured earth.  What undergirds it: pain.  The sledgehammer fallen.” –another place that Ward enlarges beyond a speaker’s likely perceptions. Effectively.

We might have talked more about death—introduced by Jojo at the start, made concrete on p.235: “What happens when you pass away?” he asks. . . . It’s like walking through a door, Jojo, Mam answers. . . .  Death a great mouth set to swallow.  . . . [becoming a ghost] only happens when the dying’s bad. Violent . . . so awful even God can’t bear to watch. … [but not me] I’ll be [here] on the other side of the door.

Character development was generally praised—Pop offering a strong resilient model for Jojo to look-up to, and also embodying such wrenching experiences that it’s hard to fathom the pain of the challenges faced by him and others.  Then, after 282 pages we follow Richie up the tree, get to the birds/feathered leaves/women, men, boys & girls, black, brown, smoke-white baby, —ghosts approached by Kayla (w/a catalogue of atrocities they’ve experienced inserted, p.282); she sings them home.  [and Ward makes sure it registers “the way she takes all the pieces of everybody and holds them together is all her. Kayla” —our history carried with us, & a reminder how things CAN add up—even skipping generations!) The character of Mam & Leonie are comprehensive, too—one the ultimate care-taker, the other “ain’t got the mother instinct . . . She aint never going to feed you” as Leonie’s mother Mama says—and seems at the base of why to Jojo, Gram is Mam, Mama is Leonie, and Jojo nurtures Kayla. We talked a bit too about how Ward doesn’t pin specific causes down, showing how living in poverty as victims of racism takes its toll on many who don’t have the strength of Mam & Pop—like w/brother Stag. An impressive feat, and excellent read.

And CK finds a link back to the main characters of Ward’s earlier book, Salvage the Bones: Ch. 10 (Leonie) page 197: Skeetah & Esch are walking a black dog on a chain on a street in Bois!   What else?   Received 2017 National Book Award!

From MaryAnne: Characters live in watery environment and flooding is a constant threat. Water also shelters dangerous animals and powerful spirits.