An Analysis of Death in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Abstract

This paper examines the nature and function of death depicted in Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. In the biopolitical society that is formed upon the threshold of bare life, black characters in the novel set in Mississippi are forced to inhabit a domain of state of exception. The ghosts in the novel indicate that the legacy of racial slavery still affects modern American society through racism, since the society is founded on the inclusive exclusion of black people. The fear for actual death forces black people to meet the condition of bare life. The novel suggests a possibility to negate such biopolitical power that kills by subjugating death. Black characters negate the formation of the extralegal power that produces them as bare lives, which is illustrated by Pop’s killing Richie before the arrival of the lynching mob. The young boy Jojo’s wish to know death hence delivers a positive message, since it implies his readiness to resist the very means of coercion that confines black bodies in the domain of bare life. Jojo and Kayla show that they will learn and remember the ghosts’ deaths, nevertheless not haunted by the fear of death.