I’m fortunate not to have any addicts in my life that I could compare with Leonie. I didn’t relate well to any of the characters and I think that’s what kept me from enjoying the book more. Pop was put in a hard place when it came to Jojo and I think he did a great job raising him to be a smart and sensitive boy. The way he spoke to Kayla was learned from his grandparents who taught him to be a man and a father much too young. He came off as much older than he was because of the rough environment he was brought up in and how he had to deal with having a mother who was absent so often. Leonie is both sympathetic and culpable which makes the reader struggle with how to feel about her. It helped you see how an addict can be out of control and how they don’t view themselves as at fault. The faults in child-rearing and absenteeism were explained away and weren’t their fault. You felt bad for them, they couldn’t help their addictions.

The ways she described the characters addicted to drugs was especially powerful. Having Jojo’s perspective and getting to see what he thought about his mother created good contrast. Leonie was not the ideal daughter but in her mind, she was still a good mother like her mother had been to her. I did like the family unit that was picked apart in this book. I liked the plot and the way Kayla, Jojo, and Leonie interacted, but when Jojo and Leonie started seeing people, I was a little too skeptical to be swept away. I think it was the elements of magical realism that were just a bit too much for me (similar to my complaints with The Mortifications). I liked the characters and I thought Leonie was especially well described. I’m not sure if it was the audio or the text. There was something in it that just didn’t click with me. I wanted to like this book more than I did. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high Mam is dying of cancer and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.

Sing unburied sing cliff notes