(2022) Second Place: Sing, Unburied, Sing and the Creation of Self
(2022) Second Place: Sing, Unburied, Sing and the Creation of Self
by Rachel Roberts
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is a novel that follows the creation and recreation of each of its main characters’ identities. Each character, Leonie, Jojo, and Richie, struggle with understanding who they are and their places in the world. Leonie struggles to mediate between her obligations as a mother and her desires as a person. Jojo is growing up in a world that has both high and low expectations for him based on the color of his skin. Richie is the ghost of a young boy struggling to understand his death and his place in the universe at large. Each character undergoes a ‘creation of self’ which Jerome Bruner describes in his essay, “The Narrative Creation of Self.”
In Bruner’s essay he explains, quite beautifully, that our image of ourselves is not static, but a constantly changing narrative. As Bruner put it, “(T)here is no such thing as an intuitively obvious and essential self to know, one that just sits there to be portrayed in words. Rather, we constantly construct and reconstruct a self to meet the needs of the situations we encounter and do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hopes and fears for the future.” (Bruner 5) This idea helps the reader gain a better understanding of Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing as a story not just of a family struggling to understand each other, but as individuals struggling to understand themselves. Sing, Unburied, Sing is about self-construction and knowing who we truly are, and it teaches the reader that to be truly whole a person needs not only to know themselves, but to be recognized for themselves and that sometimes we hurt the ones we love. Leonie and this young man, Michael, are both drug users; ironically while Michael seems to use drugs to block out his ghosts, Leonie uses drugs to contact her ghosts.
Leonie’s brother, Given, who was murdered by Michael’s cousin, appears to Leonie whenever she gets high. Given’s ghost seems to inhabit a form of self-making, as although his ghost is clarified as real in the novel, it can also be read as a metaphor for Leonie’s conscience. Leonie sees Given almost every time she takes drugs, a self-destructive action, and notably even sees his apparition when making love with Michael, who is a bad influence on her. Given’s apparition is a sign that she knows she should do better but lacks the ability to do so. Despite her actions Leonie does want to be a good mother, such as when she tries to give her daughter an herbal remedy, or denying an herbal abortion when she first became pregnant; however, her lack of skill as a parent and her self absorbed nature prevents her success in this. However, like most humans, Leonie doesn’t see the failings in herself. “Surely, if our selves were transparent to us, we would have no need to tell ourselves about them.” (Bruner 2) Leonie tries to be a good mother, but she doesn’t realize how her actions, such as her recreation