I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
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Natthapol Boonyaoudomsart
Abstract
This article explores the concept of African American homeplaces in Ward’s third novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). Through a textual analysis, it lays bare the racial oppressions endured by Richie, a twelve-year-old African American boy who dies whilst imprisoned at Parchman Prison, Mississippi. Drawing on bell hooks’ theoretical concept of homeplaces as resistance (1991), I argue that Richie embodies the longing of Black people – living and dead – for returning to their places of origin in both tangible and intangible forms. This homecoming represents his spiritual quest to escape the white-dominated world rife with racial hostility, whilst also challenging the notion that hopelessness in the novel intervenes in his search for home. The essay concludes by asserting that homes are integral to the reconstruction of African American identity as they provide a healing outlet both in life and afterlife.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Suriyan Panlay for his valuable reading of the manuscript, for his comments were instrumental in refining this research topic.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Late-Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory and Attitude
- Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
- Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
- Aestheticism and Decadence in the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Closed Buds of Decadence: Reproductive Idleness in the Poetry of Alice Meynell and Rosamund Marriott Watson
- “All Things to All Men”: Decadence as Represented in Lionel Johnson’s Early Literary Journalism
- Dramatic Adaptations and Worldview Translations: The Implied Metaphysics of Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009)
- The Neoliberal Impasse: Economy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
- Eating the Archive: Food Recipes, Migrant Women, and Decolonizing Multiculturalism in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
- I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Reviews
- Sarkowsky, Katja, and Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2021. Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 262 pp., 14 figures, 5 tables, € 117.70.
- Jens Martin Gurr. 2024. Understanding Public Debates: What Literary Studies Can Do. New York, NY: Routledge, x + 209 pp., £ 145.00/$ 190.00.
- Pamela Buck. 2024. Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs. Early Modern Feminisms. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 202 pp., 13 colour and 13 b-w images, $ 150.00.
- Naomi Levine. 2024. The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 255 pp., 3 halftones, $27.50.
- Emily Horton. 2024. 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction. London/New York/Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp., £ 85.00.
- Miles P. Grier. 2023. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery. Writing the Early Americas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, xv + 325 pp., 15 illustrations, $ 100.00.
- Allan Hepburn (ed.). 2024. Friendship and the Novel. Montreal/Kingston et al.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 297 pp., $ 110 CAD/€ 143.95.
- Debamitra Kar. 2025. Conflict Zone Literatures: A Genre in the Making. London: Routledge, 196 pp., £ 145.00.
- Pramod K. Nayar. 2024. Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x + 295 pp., £ 90.00.
- Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, and Conrad Scott (eds). 2025. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. London: Routledge, 232 pp., £ 145.00/ $ 190.00.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Late-Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory and Attitude
- Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
- Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
- Aestheticism and Decadence in the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Closed Buds of Decadence: Reproductive Idleness in the Poetry of Alice Meynell and Rosamund Marriott Watson
- “All Things to All Men”: Decadence as Represented in Lionel Johnson’s Early Literary Journalism
- Dramatic Adaptations and Worldview Translations: The Implied Metaphysics of Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009)
- The Neoliberal Impasse: Economy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
- Eating the Archive: Food Recipes, Migrant Women, and Decolonizing Multiculturalism in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
- I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Reviews
- Sarkowsky, Katja, and Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2021. Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 262 pp., 14 figures, 5 tables, € 117.70.
- Jens Martin Gurr. 2024. Understanding Public Debates: What Literary Studies Can Do. New York, NY: Routledge, x + 209 pp., £ 145.00/$ 190.00.
- Pamela Buck. 2024. Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs. Early Modern Feminisms. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 202 pp., 13 colour and 13 b-w images, $ 150.00.
- Naomi Levine. 2024. The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 255 pp., 3 halftones, $27.50.
- Emily Horton. 2024. 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction. London/New York/Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp., £ 85.00.
- Miles P. Grier. 2023. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery. Writing the Early Americas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, xv + 325 pp., 15 illustrations, $ 100.00.
- Allan Hepburn (ed.). 2024. Friendship and the Novel. Montreal/Kingston et al.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 297 pp., $ 110 CAD/€ 143.95.
- Debamitra Kar. 2025. Conflict Zone Literatures: A Genre in the Making. London: Routledge, 196 pp., £ 145.00.
- Pramod K. Nayar. 2024. Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x + 295 pp., £ 90.00.
- Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, and Conrad Scott (eds). 2025. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. London: Routledge, 232 pp., £ 145.00/ $ 190.00.
