The Top 5 of 2017: #4

I generally don’t like books that feature ghosts, and this is a novel about hauntings. But the ghosts in Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward are the hauntings of injustices, and they explain the legacy of deep racism on a particular family in a particular place. On the surface this is kind of a road trip book – a family goes to pick up their father from prison in Mississippi. But while most road trip books are about the freedom of the open road, the family here isn’t yet free. The significance of the journey from small segregated town to prison is brutal.

Ward deserves all her notoriety, which includes two National Book Awards (including one for this novel) and a MacArthur Genius Award.  She approaches storytelling like a poet -- there is not a single word in her book that doesn’t matter.  Spoiler Alert: This idea will be a contrast with my Best of 2017 #s 3-1. Stay tuned!

So, basically, I knew this book would be stunning when I sat down to read it. And stunning it was, though I will admit to being more captivated with 2011’s Salvage the Bones. Reading a Ward novel is like going to a restaurant with a master chef. Every bite is meaningful and flavorful and packed with goodness. There’s no extra fat or additives, and you don’t feel bloat at the end. Her writing is, simply, brilliant.

And I’ve been struck this year how we’ve come to associate brilliance and good ideas and smart people and intellectual development with either snobbery or dullness. “Charisma” has come to mean, for the lack of a better word, shouty. I wonder what our world would look like if we read Jesmyn Ward interviews in People magazine and heard her thoughts on CNN – rather than, well, the folks that we do.

This is for sale at zazzle.com. Yay, captalism?

You can read more about Ward here and here and here.