Jesmyn Ward, the author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi during the 1980s. DeLisle is a part of the Gulfport-Biloxi metropolitan area, and it is a small town of around one thousand residents. While Bois Sauvage, the setting for Sing, Unburied, Sing, is a fictional town, it is largely inspired by the region in which Ward grew up. Ward infuses the novel with a swampy, rural ecology largely based on DeLisle. The characters in Sing, Unburied, Sing are depicted hunting in the woods, lounging around the large oak trees, and frequenting the gulf shores and bayous. Ward seeks to highlight how the environment of this gulf coast region breeds a certain sense of vulnerability that is palpable for the characters.
While Ward's previous novel, Salvage the Bones, centered around the gulf coast region post-Hurricane Katrina, Sing, Unburied, Sing also briefly mentions this natural disaster. In greater detail, the story highlights how an environment's rurality can breed scarcity for its inhabitants. Leonie and Misty tap into the economy of drug production due to their own addiction and the lack of other employment opportunities. In addition, Ward highlights the region's inextricable ties to its own history of slavery and colonialism. Ward draws parallels between Leonie and Michael's interracial marriage with forced relationships between colonizers and the colonized or enslaved in Southern history. Finally, Ward also points to the region's ties with religion and spirituality, respectively. While churches appear in the novel, Mam also talks about her close relationships with herbalism and African-derived voodoo.
In all of these examples, Ward uses Bois Sauvage as a canvas to address regionally specific socioeconomic factors. She encourages the audience to draw comparisons between the past and the present in order to evaluate the flaws in modern society. Through her writing, Ward encourages us to use the past to move towards a more empathetic, understanding future.
