Hearing Voices

Jesmyn Ward explores African American life in the haunted South.

- Maddie Oatman

In Jesmyn Ward’s  Sing, Unburied, Sing, out in September, the National Book Award-winning novelist conjures a tale that shimmers with revenants yet remains firmly planted in earthly realities: addiction, incarceration, and racism. When drug-addled Leonie takes her mixed-race kids on a journey to pick up their white father from prison, an encounter with a cop and visits from a dead brother remind her of the challenges mounting for her 13-year-old son, Jojo. “I blink,” Leonie imagines, “and I see a bullet cleaving the soft butter of him.”