Throughout Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward emphasizes the importance of motherhood, heritage, and family dynamics on the development of children. Even though Leonie is the biological mother of Jojo and Kayla, she is often physically absent and mentally inattentive to their needs, prompting alternative caretakers, like Pop, Mam, and even Jojo himself, to emerge and provide senses of stability. Ward shows how the traditional role of motherhood and family can be upended by trauma, including addiction and death, and how the power of alternative mentors to step in can make all the difference.
Kayla, as the youngest member of the family, is in the stage of life in which her basic needs still need to be fulfilled by others. However, motherhood in the traditional sense is not present in Kayla's life. Her drug-addicted mother, Leonie, is said to lack the "motherly instinct" needed to care for her children. As she battles addiction, Leonie also deals with jealousy towards her daughter's relationship with her brother, stemming from unresolved grief over the death of her own brother, Given. The scene in which Leonie remarks, "I turn around and slap her leg, so hard my palm stings. Jealousy twins with anger. That girl: so lucky. She has all her brothers" (197) displays the lack of maternal care she has for her children. Instead, Kayla's concept of parentage and motherhood stems from her brother, Jojo. As her older brother, he is her primary caretaker, attending to Kayla when she falls ill on the journey to Parchman and becoming the sole person Kayla reaches for when in distress. In the presence of addiction, trauma, and neglect, the alternative mother of Jojo saves Kayla and provides the stability she needs to grow up successfully.
Jojo, as a growing man himself, similarly struggles with the concept of motherhood. He, too, rejects the idea that Leonie can truly fulfill the role of a parental figure, answering "'No'" when Richie asks of Jojo, "'That's your mama?'" (179). Instead, the adolescent Jojo is essentially brought up by Pop and Mam, his maternal grandparents. He spends hours with Pop, tending to the animals and listening to stories of Richie and Parchman farm. The time he spends with Pop and Mam connect him to a deeper sense of family, that of his African-American, spiritually-gifted heritage, and provide him with examples of care that Leonie and Michael are unable to give him. At the same time Jojo resents Leonie for her inability to take on motherhood, he idolizes Pop in her place as a primary caretaker, relaying that he can "duck whatever makes me feel like I'll never be able to stand as tall as Pop, never be as sure" (17) when Pop tells his stories to Jojo. The concept of alternative mentors in place of traditional motherhood is a powerful concept that Ward explores. Leonie impresses upon Jojo the need to be a mother to Kayla, but Pop is able to show him what it is truly like to be a man.
This post does an excellent job underscoring the differing roles of parents throughout the novel. However, specifically in the case of Leonie, it is notable that so many of the characters develop throughout the novel while she regresses.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Leonie is an unfit mother. She makes that abundantly clear throughout the novel, as she verbally and physically abuses her kids. She also abandons her children several times throughout the story to get high. Consequently, her children do not regard her as a mother; to them, she is just Leonie. Leonie exhibits frustration with this distinction in saying that she is “never good enough for [her kids]. Never Mama for. Just Leonie… the same disappointed syllables” (147). By the end of the novel, she almost completely vanishes with Michael from their kids’ lives. Jojo notes that his mother “ain’t never here. Not really. She come back every week, stay for two days, and then leave again” (277). As Leonie’s behavior toward her children worsens, other characters like Pop and Jojo stand in to fulfill her role as a parent.
Through Leonie’s neglect of her children, Ward asserts that being a parent necessitates involvement in the child’s life. Leonie, as a neglectful and abusive mother, consistently avoided meeting her children’s needs. While her life is, as the original post phrased it so well, upended by trauma, addiction, and death, she makes little effort to improve her relationship with her children. Through this unconventional dynamic, Ward illustrates that, while trauma affects people in different ways, it is ultimately up to an individual to determine their response. Because Leonie rarely chose to act as a parent towards her children, this unconventional family dynamic elucidates that the parental role can be fulfilled by a non-biological parent such as Pop, who cares about the wellbeing of the child.