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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes.
Illness and Healing
There are a lot of maladies in this novel; physical, social, and mental. Mam's cancer, Kayla's sickness, Leonie and Michael’s drug addictions, and the broader societal ill of racism are all instances where physical struggles or differences parallel deeper emotional and systemic problems. Mam is a healer, supernaturally gifted at fixing people’s bodies. She also comforts people emotionally, a quality that her daughter Leonie totally lacks. Leonie is too tangled in her drug addiction to escape it, or to heal the fraying bonds between herself and her parents, or herself and her children. She hasn’t inherited either Mam’s maternal instincts or her abilities with healing plants. Richie still feels the pain from the lashes on his back that he received at Parchman; worse, however, is the emotional pain that his lack of a home brings. When he gets into the car with Jojo and his family, he does so because just the sight of Jojo’s face suggests the promise of healing. As they travel in the car, Jojo’s feelings of discomfort and anxiety are internal, while Kayla’s manifest as physical illness. Both children are frightened and feel vulnerable, but Jojo represses while Kayla vomits and rages with fever. Whether they show it or they hide it, all of the novel’s characters are nursing wounds and looking for ways to heal them.
Animals
Various animals appear frequently in Sing, Unburied, Sing, and each serves specific functions within the novel. Richie’s animal companion is the most frequently seen, as he is led through his living death by a bird he believes is a guide sent to teach him how to reach Heaven. This bird, which only Richie can see, accompanies him on his journey in the afterlife. The bird is also not always a bird; it is sometimes a white snake, and can shapeshift into a black, scaly vulture at will. At Parchman Farm, the prison where much of the novel's backstory takes place, Pop is briefly responsible for taking care of the security dogs. Lots of his companions, Black and white alike, feel that it’s unnatural for a Black prisoner to take care of working canines. Dogs have a history of being used against Black people in acts of violence, but these dogs seem to have a loving connection with Pop.
The novel also starts with Pop and Jojo bonding over killing a goat, which Jojo thinks is an important part of his thirteenth birthday, but Pop is more concerned about the way the world will treat Jojo as he grows from childhood to adolescence. The Mississippi these characters live in doesn’t treat Black and white people the same way; dating back to the times of enslavement, Black people have been treated as less than human by their white counterparts and kidnappers. When Pop describes the brutal treatment a female relative received when she was kidnapped and enslaved, he says that the way the slavers treated her “made her into an animal under the hot sky.” Indeed, animals are sometimes treated with more compassion or consideration than the Black inhabitants of Bois Sauvage, and although Pop doesn’t want to scare Jojo, he wants him to be ready.
Journeys
Almost every person in this novel embarks on a life-changing journey. Whether it’s crossing the state to pick up Michael from prison or learning how to be an adult in an uncaring world, each person is placed on a path to change. The novel’s initial plot engine is the road trip that Leonie takes her children Jojo and Kayla on to pick Michael up from prison. Her white friend Misty accompanies them, and along the way they deal with problems from microaggressions, to a car that smells of vomit, to experiencing police brutality and surviving a near-fatal overdose. As they take this journey, Jojo is forced to see his mother from a new and uncomfortable perspective, realizing how little she truly cares for anyone but herself and Michael. Upon leaving Parchman, the family picks up an uninvited guest that only Jojo and Kayla can see: Richie, the ghost of a young boy who died at Parchman while incarcerated, has hitched a ride with them. He’s been trapped and unable to access the afterlife for an indeterminate amount of time, his earthbound journey spent trying to discover the truth about his death, which he believes will free him. Pop and Mam verbally journey through the past a great deal, discussing their own paths to their current life and the way the traumas they’ve experienced have changed the family. Pop’s stories, in particular, form a kind of journey through time. He tells them to Jojo to help him understand the world that waits for him, but also to draw closer to his grandson as his wife is dying.
Songs and Stories
Songs and stories are a very important part of Sing, Unburied, Sing, echoing the importance of oral traditions for Black communities in times when reading and writing were punishable offenses. Characters share their histories and connect with each other in many ways, but some of the novel’s most important bonds are built through oral tellings and retellings. Mam tries to teach Leonie how to identify healing plants by showing her their properties, attempting to pass on her supernatural gift for healing and communicate the Vodou traditions of her Haitian heritage.
Although Leonie’s supernatural powers don’t manifest in the same way as Mam’s do, she’s also not interested in learning to heal. The story that Leonie is mostly interested in is the love story between herself and Michael; throughout the book, she’s paying attention to that and to little else besides her addiction and her grief for Given. The songs that Mam and Leonie sing to their children as babies also play an important role at the end of the novel. Pop tells Jojo stories of his time at Parchman, passing down difficult but crucial family history. These stories give Jojo insight into his grandfather’s life and the broader context of racial injustice in Mississippi. They also prove to be very important for Richie, who believes that his time on Earth will end if he can join “the song,” the sound that calls him to a beautiful but unreachable paradise beyond the veil of the real world. Richie believes that Pop’s story will allow him to go “home,” but it’s actually Kayla’s nonsense lullaby that eventually links him to his past.
