Abstract
The road novel genre, established by Jack Kerouac with the publication of On the road (1957), has as its main characteristic the narrative of the characters' journey, focusing on displacement. In its beginnings, the genre was produced by male authors and it was about the trajectory of the characters, also male, from one side to the other without a certain destination or motivation. However, nowadays, more and more women have appropriated the genre and modified it, as in Sing, unburied, sing, by Jesmyn Ward, published in 2017. Thus, this text aims to understand how the characters experience the journey and how black mobility is influenced by social constructions. The novel points to the difficulty that exists in relation to the appropriation of space by the black body, whose supposed notion that the automobile provides everyone with freedom of movement is constantly questioned by the fear present inside the car.
Keywords
Road novel; literature by black women; displacement; travel; Jesmyn Ward