Sing, Unburied, Sing: Tone 1 key example

Fittingly, Leonie’s narration feels much less grounded in responsibility and anxiety about the future. Her tone swings between apathy and guilt, especially during scenes when she’s high. Leonie is always searching for ways to distract herself from the pain of her current existence. She uses drugs to neutralize her guilt, but because they reliably summon the ghost of her brother Given, they also reinforce it. When she’s sober her narration is straightforward and sometimes harsh, but the drugs interfere with her grip on time and memory more and more. Richie’s chapters feel the least rooted in the real world. Because he’s a ghost who has an uncertain relationship with time, his narrative voice obeys a kind of dream logic. Moments blend together and his stories about the past sometimes bleed into the present. 

There’s a sense of bitterness and longing in the voice of every narrator in Sing, Unburied, Sing. Leonie wants to be loved by her children and to be seen as a good mother, even though she knows she can’t give them what they need. Jojo wants guidance and safety, but he rarely gets either from anyone but Mam and Pop. Richie longs to “follow the song” that he believes will lead him to heaven, but his soul remains trapped on earth by his memories of Parchman. Ward cuts through all this bleakness in short, quiet moments where characters show genuine affection for one another. These moments never last long, and they’re usually followed by tragedy, but they give the reader a brief shift in the cloud of agony that hangs over the book. There’s no resolution at the end of the novel; the tone remains unfulfilled and full of longing. No matter what the family does or what they sacrifice, they can’t erase Mississippi’s history of violence. They can bear witness to its ghosts but can’t remedy the injustice that ruined the afterlives of all the Black people unable to find rest.