• Complain

Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing

Here you can read online Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: NYC, year: 2017, publisher: Scribner, genre: Prose. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Jesmyn Ward Sing, Unburied, Sing
  • Book:
    Sing, Unburied, Sing
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Scribner
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2017
  • City:
    NYC
  • ISBN:
    978-1-5011-2609-3
  • Rating:
    3 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 60
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Sing, Unburied, Sing: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Sing, Unburied, Sing" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Awardwinner Jesmyn Ward. In Jesmyn Wards first novel since her National Book Awardwinning , this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippis past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in she is at the height of her powers. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when shes high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonies children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. Sing, Unburied, Sing Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward: author's other books


Who wrote Sing, Unburied, Sing? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Sing, Unburied, Sing — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Sing, Unburied, Sing" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

Jesmyn Ward

Who are we looking for who are we looking for Its Equiano were looking for - photo 1

Who are we looking for, who are we looking for?

Its Equiano were looking for.

Has he gone to the stream? Let him come back.

Has he gone to the farm? Let him return.

Its Equiano were looking for.

Kwa chant about the disappearance of an African boy, Equiano

Running through the field, all I hear is laughter

Cause the chains that kept us here can no longer capture

The heart of my folk. Foot on the throat of my oppressor

For all of them ropes. They tied a tree for my ancestors.

If limbs could talk, theyd cry for days.

Big KRIT, from God Bless America, by Dizzy Wright

The memory is a living thingit too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and livesthe old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.

from One Writers Beginnings, by Eudora Welty

The Gulf shines, dull as lead. The coast of Texas

glints like a metal rim. I have no home

as long as summer bubbling to its head

boils for that day when in the Lord Gods name

the coals of fire are heaped upon the head

of all whose gospel is the whip and flame,

age after age, the uninstructing dead.

from The Gulf, by Derek Walcott

Chapter 1.Jojo

I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that its something I could look at straight. When Pop tell me he need my help and I see that black knife slid into the belt of his pants, I leave Mam sleep in her bed and my little sister Kayla sleep on a blanket on the floor, and I follow Pop out the house, try to keep my back straight, my shoulders even as a hanger; thats how Pop walks. He weaves in and out of the trees, straight and slim and brown as a young pine tree. I try to look like this is normal and boring so Pop will think Ive earned these thirteen years, so Pop will know Im ready to pull what needs to be pulled, separate innards from muscle, organs from cavities. I want Pop to know I can get bloody. Todays my birthday.

I grab the door so it dont slam, ease it into the jamb. I dont want Mam or Kayla to wake up with none of us in the house. Better for them to sleep. Better for Kayla to sleep, because on nights when Leonies out working, she wake up every hour, sit straight up in the bed, and scream. Better for Mam to sleep, because the chemo done dried her up and hollowed her out the way the sun and the air do water oaks. Pop spits in the dry red dirt, and the wind makes the trees wave. Its cold. This winter is stubborn, wont make way for spring. The chill stays like water in a bad-draining tub. I left my hoodie on the floor in Leonies room, where I sleep, and my T-shirt is thin, but I dont rub my arms. If I let the cold goad me, I know when I see the goat, Ill flinch or frown when Pop cuts the throat. And Pop, being Pop, will see.

Better to leave the baby asleep, Pop says.

Pop built our house himself, narrow in the front and long, close to the road so he could leave the rest of the property wooded. He put his pigpen and his goat yard and the chicken coop in small clearings in the trees. We have to walk past the pigpen to get to the goats. The dirt is black and muddy with shit, and ever since Pop whipped me when I was six for running around the pen with no shoes on, Ive never been barefoot out here again. You could get worms, Pop had said. Later that night, he told me stories about him and his sisters and brothers when they were young, playing barefoot because all they had was one pair of shoes each and them for church. They all got worms, and when they used the outhouse, they pulled worms out of their butts. I dont tell Pop, but that was more effective than the whipping.

Pop picks the unlucky goat, ties a rope around its head like a noose, leads it out the pen. The others bleat and rush him, butting his legs, licking his pants.

Get! Get! Pop says, and kicks them away. I think the goats understand each other; I can see it in the stubborn butts of their heads, in the way they bite Pops pants and yank. I think they know what that loose rope tied around the goats neck means. The white goat with black splashes on his fur dances from side to side, resisting, like he catches a whiff of what he is walking toward. Pop pulls him past the pigs, who rush the fence and grunt at Pop, wanting food, and down the trail toward the shed, which is closer to the house. Leaves slap my shoulders, and they scratch me dry, leaving thin white lines scrawled on my arms.

Why you aint got more of this cleared out, Pop?

Aint enough space, Pop says. And dont nobody need to see what I got back here.

You can hear the animals up front. From the road.

And if anybody come back here trying to mess with my animals, I can hear them coming through these trees.

You think any of the animals would let themselves get took?

No. Goats is mean and pigs is smarter than you think. And they vicious, too. One of them pigsll take a bite out of anybody they aint used to eating from.

Pop and I enter the shed. Pop ties the goat to a post hes driven into the floor, and it barks at him.

Who you know got all they animals out in the open? Pop says. And Pop is right. Nobody in Bois has their animals out in the open in fields, or in the front of their property.

The goat shakes its head from side to side, pulls back. Tries to shrug the rope. Pop straddles it, puts his arm under the jaw.

The big Joseph, I say. I want to look out the shed when I say it, over my shoulder at the cold, bright green day, but I make myself stare at Pop, at the goat with its neck being raised to die. Pop snorts. I hadnt wanted to say his name. Big Joseph is my White grandpa, Pop my Black one. Ive lived with Pop since I was born; Ive seen my White grandpa twice. Big Joseph is round and tall and looks nothing like Pop. He dont even look like Michael, my father, who is lean and smudged with tattoos. He picked them up like souvenirs from wannabe artists in Bois and out on the water when he worked offshore and in prison.

Well, there you go, Pop says.

Pop wrestles the goat like its a man, and the goats knees buckle. It falls face forward in the dirt, turns its head to the side so its looking up at me with its cheek rubbing the dusty earth and bloody floor of the shed. It shows me its soft eye, but I dont look away, dont blink. Pop slits. The goat makes a sound of surprise, a bleat swallowed by a gurgle, and then theres blood and mud everywhere. The goats legs go rubbery and loose, and Pop isnt struggling anymore. All at once, he stands up and ties a rope around the goats ankles, lifting the body to a hook hanging from the rafters. That eye: still wet. Looking at me like I was the one who cut its neck, like I was the one bleeding it out, turning its whole face red with blood.

You ready? Pop asks. He glances at me then, quickly, but his look aint soft. I nod. Im frowning, my face drawn tight. I try to relax as Pop cuts the goat along the legs, giving the goat pant seams, shirt seams, lines all over.

Grab this here, Pop says. He points at a line on the goats stomach, so I dig my fingers in and grab. Its still warm, and its wet. Dont slip, I say to myself. Dont slip.

Pull, Pop says.

I pull. The goat is inside out. Slime and smell everywhere, something musty and sharp, like a man who aint took a bath in some days. The skin peels off like a banana. It surprises me every time, how easy it comes away once you pull. Pop yanking hard on the other side, and then hes cutting and snapping the hide off at the feet. I pull the skin down the animals leg to the foot, but I cant get it off like Pop, so he cuts and snaps.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Sing, Unburied, Sing»

Look at similar books to Sing, Unburied, Sing. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Sing, Unburied, Sing»

Discussion, reviews of the book Sing, Unburied, Sing and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.