![]() Once a year or so, I see it in Pop, how he got leaner and leaner with age, the tendons in him standing out, harder and more rigid, every year. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants. "Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Leonie is also having a difficult time dealing with her mother's illness, as she was always such a force in her life. But Mam is dying of cancer, and her illness seems to be eating away at Pop as well. Growing up a biracial child in Mississippi isn't easy, but Jojo's grandparents, Pop and Mam, have taught him compassion and love, as well as survival skills to weather the hard times both physical and emotional, and how to be a good man. Three-year-old Kayla often looks to Jojo for food, love, and nurturing, which often irritates Leonie when she is around. He and his younger sister Kayla (short for Michaela) have essentially been raised by their grandparents, since their mother Leonie is often absent, either physically or emotionally, as she "ain't got the mothering instinct," and their father Michael is in prison. ![]() Jojo is 13 years old, on the cusp of manhood but in some ways still very much a child, longing for the security and comfort of an easier time in his life. ![]() ![]() Profound, poetic, and at times painful to read, Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing is searing, truly a soaring literary achievement that I won't stop thinking about anytime soon. ![]()
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