Pilgrimages to the Past in Jesmyn Ward and Toni Morrison

This chapter offers a comparative analysis of Jesmyn Ward’s, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Toni Morrison’s, Song of Solomon (1977). It focusses on the journeys of their Black male protagonists and considers their depictions of rebellion and compassion in the wake of slavery. Sing, Unburied, Sing, follows the pilgrimage of a young Black man to uncover his grandfather’s past and rewrite his own future. It simultaneously offers the reader a pilgrimage back to Morrison’s earlier novel, which similarly uses a physical journey to reveal a psychological one. Ward’s novel, like Morrison’s, uses the characters’ personal epiphanies to consider the broader legacies of slavery in the American South. However, Ward’s vision of what this journey implies for Black masculinity diverges in particular ways. Through thirteen-year-old Jojo’s reluctant travels to the darkly spiritual ground of Parchman prison, and subsequent return with the ghost of a boy who unlocks his grandfather’s secret past, the novel explores police brutality, poverty, addiction, and the prison industrial complex. Though like Song of Solomon in its vision of a spiritual journey South that uncovers buried traumas, Ward’s sympathetic protagonist and uplifting ending suggest ways in which the cycles of violence that entrap Morrison’s men, might be broken.