Ward is an amazing writer being able to intertwine both fiction and nonfiction elements into a multi-perspective story. Addiction as a mechanism to escape the real world is a major theme we see in Sing, Unburied, Sing. As someone who works at a recovery center here in town, I’m all too familiar with addiction and the effects it can have on people and their loved ones.
We see Michael using drugs as a way to escape his depression and grief due to the oil rig he was working at blowing up. Michael started having nightmares about the explosion, guilt about all 11 of his coworkers dying, and after being unemployed for 6 months, Michael became depressed. It’s unclear if he started using before or after he started selling, but we see him start to deteriorate. He couldn’t find a job, he and Leonie had run through all the money they had saved up, he had a son and a baby on the way still living with his girlfriend’s parents, and there was a lot of disappointment between his parents and him due to his relationship with Leonie. And his solution, as a means of survival, was to use and cook meth and he ended up going to jail because of it. It not only affected him physically where “he started getting skinny.. [and] … his cheekbones started standing out on his face” (page 93). But it also affects his family.
JoJo is now able to recognize drugs when they’re at Misty’s friend's house. He goes out back and knows he’s “seen this before, know[s] that smell because when Michael built his lean-to in the woods behind Mam and Pop’s house, it looked and smelled like this” (page 88-89). As a thirteen year old boy he is able to identify drugs and realize it was being cooked. And with Michael in jail, JoJo had to grow up faster and take care of Kayla because Leonie also started using. He doesn’t really expect much from Leonie as a mother because of it and because he’s used to her doing things only for herself. He gives her the same looks Given gives her: disappointment.
Leonie’s character is extremely hard to sympathize with given the way she acts, however, seeing addiction through her perspective, rather than JoJo’s, humanizes addiction. Through her character, readers can understand how addiction is not just a moral failing but often a response to a complex web of circumstances, including trauma, poverty, and lack of support. We see Leonie using drugs as a way to escape her trauma and difficulties in her life. “I knew I shouldn’t have: I was pregnant. But I couldn’t help… [it]”. (page 51) She faces a history of a dysfunctional family, the loss of her brother Given, and the challenges of being a young, Black mother in a racially divided and economically disadvantaged region. Her boyfriend's dad is racist, she get's a job in the food industry where working fast and hard is due to being on drugs. Her boyfriend goes to jail, she has two kids that she didn’t necessarily want to begin with, and to just feel numb to everything, to be able to carry everything and not just crumble, she started using. And later on to pay for the trip, to try and get enough money to move out of her parents house, to pay for the lawyer that helps get Michael out, she agrees to pick up and sell drugs.
Through Michael and Leonie’s characters struggling with addiction we see that addiction isn’t because of one single instance where they’ve blatantly decided ‘ok this one thing sucks I’m going to start abusing drugs’. It’s a combination of a lot of factors and there’s not one thing to be blamed. The experiences with drugs throughout the story also dives into the deeper issue of marginalized communities using substances as a way to cope with the weight of their experiences and the systemic injustices they face. The lack of access to resources for mental health and addiction treatment, as well as the prevalence of drug-related arrests, are woven into the narrative, shedding light on the systemic issues that contribute to the cycle of addiction.
Ward’s portrayal of addiction in the novel is very well-written and interesting. I specifically think that first time we see Leonie do drugs helps to show a lot why she turned to drug addiction, without having to explicitly spell out the contributing factors.
ReplyDeleteWhen Leonie goes to her friend and coworker Misty’s house, she’s haunted by her failure to give Jojo a happy birthday, despite her efforts to focus on Michael’s return. “I’d felt so happy when I got the phone call... [b]ut when I lefy, Jojo looked up from where he sat... [a]nd I couldn’t shake it. His expression kept coming back to me through my shift” (33). She clearly feels guilty over her inability to be a good mother. However, when she snorts a line of cocaine, she says, “I forgot. The shoes I didn’t buy, the melted cake, the phone call” (33). Ward uses the first time she writes drug use to explicitly center the use as a way for Leonie to forget her shame and guilt over not being able to provide.
However, that’s not the only factor in her drug use. Leonie says that she used to do drugs less frequently, however, after Michael left, “[she] had started doing it often, every other day... [she couldn’t help wanting to feel the coke go up [her] nose, shoot straight up to [her] brain, and burn up all the sorrow and despair [she] felt at Michael being gone” (51). This scene illustrates how Leonie’s addiction ramped up when Michael left and helped her to bury the pain.
These aren’t the only factors that push Leonie towards addiction, but I like that Ward shows how addiction isn’t just due to one cause. Leonie’s addiction results from a combination of her environment, her grief, her pain, and her guilt. I also think that this helps to illustrate why tackling addiction also requires investment in mental health resources, as Leonie's addiction is clearly a result of her attempting to cope with her grief.