 |
| Jesmyn Ward |
In ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing,’ a Haunted Road Trip to Prison
(This book was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2017. )
SING, UNBURIED, SING
By Jesmyn Ward
304 pp. Scribner. $26.
Bois Sauvage, Miss., is the kind of place where a black man might be shot dead because of a bet gone awry, and where the authorities might agree to deem the incident a “hunting accident.” A place where ignoring a No Trespassing sign can get you chased off a white man’s property at the barrel of a gun. And where being black and poor or white and unlucky might get you sent upstate to Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, which has evolved only superficially from the long-ago days when it operated like a plantation: “the long line. Men strung out across the fields, the trusty shooters stalking the edge, the driver on his mule, the caller yelling to the sun, throwing his working song out.” Though it’s a fictional town, Bois Sauvage is as mired in its own history as, frankly, most real places in America, a fact that has become painfully plain in the handful of years since Trayvon Martin’s killing first made headlines.
