logo

75 pages 2 hours read

Jesmyn Ward

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Introduction

Teacher Introduction

Sing, Unburied, Sing

  • Genre: Fiction; literary fiction
  • Originally Published: 2017
  • Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 840L; college/adult
  • Structure/Length: 15 chapters; approx. 320 pages; approx. 8 hours, 22 minutes on audio
  • Protagonist and Central Conflict: Thirteen-year-old Jojo learns what it means to be a man on a road trip with his mother to Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary where his white father has been released. At Parchman, the ghost of a thirteen-year-old inmate teaches Jojo about fathers and sons, legacies, violence, and love.
  • Potential Sensitivity Issues: Racism; fatmisia; sexual assault; lynching; police brutality; drug use, abuse, and overdose; abusive/neglectful parenting; imprisonment; prison abuse; poverty; death by cancer

Jesmyn Ward, Author

  • Bio: born April 1977; American novelist and Professor of English at Tulane University; first in her family to attend college; earned a BA in English and an MA in Media Studies from Stanford University; younger brother killed by a drunk driver in 2000; MFA in Creative Writing from University of Michigan; she and her family were victims of Hurricane Katrina, when their home in DeLisle, Mississippi flooded; unable to write creatively for 3 years afterward; decided to give up writing and enroll in a nursing program when her first book, Where the Line Bleeds (2008), was accepted for publication; two-time winner of the National Book Award for Fiction (2011 and 2017); only woman and only Black person to win the National Book Award twice; youngest person to receive the US Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
  • Other Works: Where the Line Bleeds (2008); Salvage the Bones (2011); Men We Reaped (2013); The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (2016); Navigate Your Stars (2020)
  • Awards: National Book Award for Fiction Winner (2017); Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner (2018); Time Magazine Best Novel of the Year (2017); New York Times Top 10 (2017); Kirkus Prize Finalist (2017); National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist (2017); Andrew Carnegie Medal Finalist (2018); Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist (2018)                       

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text