The “Sing, Unburied, Sing” Novel by Jesmin Ward

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An increase in the number of divorces and a decrease in the birth rate, a growth in crime in the sphere of family and household relations and in the risk of children’s susceptibility to neuroses occur due to the unfavorable psychological climate in the family. American writer Jasmin Ward in her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing demonstrates an example of such a family. She raises the problems of the negative social environment, due to which a teenage pregnancy and drug addiction of Leonie appears. These signs of family disorganization caused by the mother’s actions pose a threat to children of serious psychological trauma that will affect their future fate by distorting the model of family relationships.

One of the main characters of Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward – Leonie – is the mother of Jojo and Kayla. She loves her children but makes constant mistakes in their upbringing and turns to drugs to escape reality. Leonie had Jojo at seventeen, and as a teenage mother, she could hardly take care of herself, and she did not know how to look after her baby (Bale and Bondevik 80). Having become pregnant, Leonie can no longer get a decent education and find a good job in the future, which has a bad effect on her self-esteem. The father of the children is sent to prison, and all responsibility for them falls on the mother. Friends become uninterested in communicating with her, because their circle of interests and lifestyle ceases to coincide. A young mother has to leave clubs and other entertainment in the past for a long time. Abruptly becoming an adult, Leonie tears off the children’s irritation at her failed life.

At the start of the story, Michael is incarcerated, affecting her ability to be a good mother. The very fact that Leonie decides to take the children for her husband’s release from prison is selfish. Before taking the children to the colony, she had to be aware that for children, seeing prison and prisoners would be stressful. When children see their father with a shaved head, dressed in an orange robe and worn-out shoes, is brought under escort in handcuffs, this will affect their psyche. The smaller the child, the more difficult it is for them to understand what restriction or deprivation of liberty is (Evans 454). Therefore, taking the children with her on such a trip, and not leaving them with their grandmother, Leonie risked causing serious psychological trauma to her son and little daughter.

Leonie cannot care for her children because she does not possess caring instincts. Maternal instinct is the norm of female behavior towards her own child, which manifests itself in caring and caring for them, as well as love and tenderness. However, Leonie has no desire to be around her children: she becomes angry and aggressive towards children, a woman does not need those emotions that her son and daughter are able to give her (Bale and Bondevik 74). The heroine feels tired and irritated when performing actions related to child care, and she tries to spend less time with him together.

The reasons for this behavior in Leonie are both unplanned pregnancy, since she became a mother in adolescence, and prolonged postpartum depression. Performing the same child care activities is not enough to awaken maternal love. Since her pregnancy was unwanted, it is very difficult for her to force herself to love children. After Leonie became a mother, her life changed dramatically (Leader-Picone 28). Her own interests faded into the background, and new worries appeared. All these factors have led to a mental disorder – depression, which entails a lack of maternal instinct.

Jojo is left to look after his younger sister Kayla because their mother is incapable of it. Leonie is filled with anger, and it is easy to take it out on her children. Leonie almost slaps Kayla when bathing her but stops herself. This episode shows how she is trying to be a good mother (Olah 176). Leonie’s suffering is overwhelming her, and she is incapable of handling it. The woman isolates herself from her kids to avoid harming them. Leonie and Michael’s relationship is loving and destructive at the same time. Their relationship separates the character from everything, including her children. When Leonie became pregnant with Jojo, she was forced to become a parent before she was ready. Even though he had no life experience, Jojo experienced the same thing when his mother did not care for Kayla.

Another act of Leonie trying to be a good mother is when she puts Kayla on her lap and gives her a peppermint. This act of kindness turns wrong when a wild hog runs onto the road, and Kayla goes flying and hurts her head. Leonie expresses her pain by lashing out at others. “It feels good to be mean, to speak past the baby; I can’t hit and let that anger touch another. The one I’m never good enough for. Never Mama for. Just Leonie, a name wrapped around the same disappointing syllables I’ve heard from Mama, Pop, and even Given my whole fucking life”(Ward 101). There are multiple reasons why Leonie is an awful mother. She deals with trauma, structural oppression, and her flaws. Leonie started using drugs due to Michael’s influence and her brother’s death.

When Leonie gets high, she hallucinates and sees her brother Given. When Given appears while Leonie is high, he attempts to stop her from making bad decisions, but it does not work. This negatively impacts the children’s lives by passing the trauma down. Moreover, when Leonie’s mother died of cancer, she left the kids to Pop. This further proves how she is a terrible and irresponsible mother and daughter. “Throughout the novel, Leonie’s sense of guilt increases”(Bale and Bondevik 73). When she tries to help one person in the family, she feels like the others are drowning: ” I am failing them. We are all drowning” (Ward 196). Leonie is trying every day to survive and move on to the next.

Leonie and Michael constantly fight in front of Michael and Kayla. Children, witnessing a parental quarrel, experience a whole range of negative feelings: fear, pain, helplessness, anxiety and anger. The psyche of children is in the process of formation, therefore, due to their immaturity, they cannot cope with negative experiences on their own (Leader-Picone 14). These emotions develop into whims and stubbornness, with the help of which children unconsciously try to attract the attention of parents so that they can help them cope with pain and worries.

However, all these factors are not Leonie’s fault. “Without realizing it, Leonie carries the traumas of past generations of African Americans” (Evans 452). Due to the lack of real measures to eliminate unemployment, increase the level of education and increase wages, the black population of American cities, which includes the Leonie family, is still socially deprived. The deepest social and economic problems that are associated with the situation of the African-American population of the country are the basis of its dysfunctional family situation.

One of the most important manifestations of the true social status of African Americans in the United States is economic inequality. Until now, African Americans are on average much poorer than representatives of other ethnic and racial groups of the American population (Li 97). This is due to the persistence of poverty in African-American communities. Poverty is inherited, it drags on and becomes the most important obstacle to social mobility.

The economic inequality of African Americans is exacerbated by social inequality. Social and cultural capital is no less important, because it is the possession of them that allows families to provide education and a career for their children. “Racism affects the fate of not only the whole society as a whole, but also the micro spaces of individual families” (Leader-Picone 10). The African-American population of the United States, with rare exceptions, has minimal social and cultural capital. Most of them, like Leonie’s children, are brought up in single—parent families, where the only breadwinner is the mother. Naturally, this circumstance alone has a huge impact on the social status of the African-American population, determining the future of most children at the bottom of the social hierarchy of American society.

The social inequality of African Americans and whites is a natural consequence of the discriminatory policies implemented in the first half of the twentieth century. The abolition of segregation in the United States occurred only in the 1960s, but still white and black Americans consider themselves representatives of different social groups (Bale and Bondevik 72). “The atmosphere of racism does not cease to affect the lives of ordinary people”(Olah 190). In places where African Americans live compactly, sociologists note a much worse standard of living than in areas where white Americans live.

Black neighborhoods are essentially social ghettos in which total poverty caused by unemployment, street crime, drug addiction and drug trafficking, alcoholism, prostitution flourish. “Drugs, single-parenting and racism have unfortunately become the norm in many African-American families below the poverty line” (Li 89). Therefore, Leonie is only a victim of her social environment. The fact that she started using drugs and gave birth to her first child at the age of 17 speaks more about the problems of society as a whole than about the negative features of her personality.

Thus, Leonie could not become a good mother to her children. Her quarrels with her husband, drug addiction and substance-induced hallucinations, as well as the lack of maternal instinct will negatively affect the children. However, Leonie became a victim of circumstances that she could not fight. The social structure of racial inequality caused by centuries-old racism still affects society and individual families as a whole. Leonie’s family, her husband and children also suffered from the same issue as her ancestors. Most likely, Michael, Kayla and Jojo, having adopted the family model of parents, will pass it on to their children. This will not be their fault: as long as there are such vices as racism in the world, black children from disadvantaged areas across America will suffer from cold, distant parents with a criminal past and drug problems.

Works Cited

Bale, Kjersty, and Hilde Bondevik. “4 Magical Thinking: Experiences of Grief and Mourning in George Saunders’ Lincoln in The Bardo and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Exploring Grief Towards a Sociology of Sorrow, edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Anders Petersen, Routledge, 2020, pp. 69-84.

Evans, Rebecca. “Geomemory and genre friction: Infrastructural violence and plantation afterlives in contemporary African American novels.” American Literature, vol. 93, no. 3, 2021, pp. 445-472.

Leader-Picone, Cameron. “On The Whiteness of Post-Blackness: Colson Whitehead and Racial Individualism.” Black and More than Black: African American Fiction in the Post Era (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies), University Press of Mississippi, 2019, pp. 3-44.

Li, Stephanie. “Learning to Listen in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers, edited by Jean Wyatt and Sheldon George, Routledge, 2020, pp. 88-104.

Olah, Natalie. “Cruel Brittany.” Steal as Much as You Can: How to Win the Culture Wars in an Age of Austerity, Repeater, 2019, pp. 175-199.

Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel. Scribner, 2018.

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The “Sing, Unburied, Sing” Novel by Jesmin Ward

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