If you liked
Books like Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
Sing, Unburied, Sing is Jesmyn Ward's National Book Award winner: a road trip across Mississippi that carries the living, the dying and the dead all at once. She writes the American South as a place still haunted by its history, literally. If you want more lyrical, ghost-touched fiction about race and memory, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
Let Us Descendby Jesmyn Ward
“Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward 2023 review. An enslaved teenage girl walks from a Carolina rice plantation to the New Orleans slave market. Ward's structural follow-up to Sing Unburied Sing.”
Belovedby Toni Morrison
“Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.”
Song of Solomonby Toni Morrison
“Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 1977 review. Macon "Milkman" Dead III, born into a comfortable Black family in 1930s Michigan, travels south to discover his ancestral history. Morrison's third novel and one of her two unquestioned masterpieces alongside Beloved.”
Homegoingby Yaa Gyasi
“Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 2016 review. Seven generations of two half-sister bloodlines, one in Ghana and one in America, from eighteenth-century Fanteland to present-day Stanford. Gyasi's debut and one of the canonical contemporary American diaspora novels.”
The Nickel Boysby Colson Whitehead
“The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead 2019 review. Two boys at the segregated Nickel Academy reform school in 1960s Florida, based on the real Dozier School. Pulitzer Prize 2020 and the canonical contemporary American novel on institutional violence against Black children.”
The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead
“The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 2016 review. Cora, a slave on a Georgia plantation, escapes north via an actual underground railroad, a literalized version of the metaphor. Pulitzer Prize 2017 and the National Book Award winner that defined the contemporary Black literary moment.”
FAQ
Common questions about Sing, Unburied, Sing read-alikes
- I want more Jesmyn Ward.
- Let Us Descend is her most recent novel, following an enslaved girl on a march south with the same lyric intensity and the same presence of spirits. It is the natural next step and shows how far she pushes the ghost story as history.
- What is the closest match in the catalog?
- Beloved by Toni Morrison. Ward writes in Morrison's lineage directly, and Beloved is the founding text for the haunted-by-slavery American novel. Song of Solomon is the other essential Morrison, with the same mythic charge.
- I want the multi-generational sweep of Black history.
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi traces two branches of a family from eighteenth-century Ghana to the present, a chapter per generation. It gives the historical scope that Sing, Unburied, Sing compresses into a single haunted family.
- I want more contemporary novels about American racial history.
- The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, both by Colson Whitehead and both Pulitzer winners, sit on the same shelf. Whitehead is more restrained than Ward, but the subject and the seriousness rhyme.
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