Agential black body in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) vividly captures the lived experiences of African Americans in the rural Southern United States amidst the enduring legacies of slavery and the ongoing impact of racial subjugation. This article focuses on the novel’s portrayal of its Black chara...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2024
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25033/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25033/1/Gema%20Online_24_4_20.pdf |
| Summary: | Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) vividly captures the lived experiences of African
Americans in the rural Southern United States amidst the enduring legacies of slavery and the
ongoing impact of racial subjugation. This article focuses on the novel’s portrayal of its Black
characters and articulation of the Black body to demonstrate how the Black body not only bears
the scars of systemic, historical-social injustice but also functions as a site of recuperation.
Building upon George Yancy’s concept of “the agential Black body”, the article contends that
affirming the Black body requires acknowledging the epistemic violence imposed upon it and
recognising the body’s potential to transcend such limitations. Yancy’s concept of Black
affirmation and modalities of Black ontology, including storytelling and musicking, are especially
relevant in this article’s analysis of Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. These elements illustrate how, in
the novel, the Black body—through embodied self-articulation—testifies to moments of violation
and uses those moments to re-inscribe itself. Thus, the Black body expands beyond the limited and
essentialist (white) configurations, and gestures towards its state of possibilities. The article argues
that the novel’s narrative techniques and its engagement with African American literary traditions
re-visibilise and manifest the resilience of the Black body. |
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