Book Review: If I Survive You by Jonathon Escoffery

My Rating: 3.5⭐

If I Survive You by Jonathon Escoffery revolves around a Jamaican-American immigrant family who settles in Miami in the 1970s. Through a series of eight interconnected stories, we follow the family as they navigate their way through years of financial struggles, racism and poverty compounded by their struggles with acceptance, identity crisis, dysfunctional family dynamics, and turbulent relationships. The stories are told through the POVs of multiple members of the family, though a major part of the story is told from the perspective of Trelawny, the younger son of Topper and Sanya. Trelawny’s relationship with his father and brother, Delano is integral to how Trelawney approaches the major decisions in his life. The first story is told from Trelawny’s PoV and focuses on his identity crisis and his efforts to find a place for himself amongst his friends and peers.

“You’re a rather pale shade of brown, if skin color has anything to do with race. Your parents share your hue. As do their parents. Their parents, your great-grands, occupy your family’s photo albums in black-and-white and sepia tones that conceal the color of their skin. Some look like they might guest-appear on The Jeffersons, while others look like they’d sooner be cast on All in the Family.”

A constant question he is asked is “What are you?” – A question that he is unable to convincingly answer. Not dark enough to be labeled Black, clearly neither Hispanic nor White, though he often does use this lack of clarity about his racial identity to his benefit in an effort to fit in with different peer groups in school, this is a question that follows him throughout his life.

Life is not easy for Trelawny, as he struggles to find a place for himself in the world and deal with conflicting expectations from his family, mostly his father who tries to preserve and imbibe as much of the values of his ethnic culture and habits of his home country as possible in his sons. As Topper reflects on his younger son, “In spite of him name, Trelawny grow up strange. Foreign. You blame the nursery school teachers where you and Sanya leave him when you go work each morning, where you bring him from him turn six months old.”

Trelawny struggles with his relationship with his family and with romantic relationships. Not only does he find it difficult to secure meaningful employment despite being a college graduate and is unable to settle in a career that would be fulfilling but also struggles to find a sense of belongingness among his family , peers and scociety in general. He finds himself alone most of the time, making questionable choices, often not quite learning from his mistakes. The author also gives us insight into what motivates Sanya, Delano and Topper as they go their own way and what makes this a compelling read is that despite being a family, each of these characters has distinct trajectories that take them in different directions.

“It occurs to you that people like you—people who burn themselves up in pursuit of survival—rarely survive anyone or anything.”

Jonathan Escoffery’s writing is powerful and his themes are timely and relevant. I did have some trouble following the dialect in some parts of the story and while I did enjoy the honest and authentic depiction of the immigrant experience as told through the perspectives of a family, each of whom is strong, willful and motivated in their own way, I did find it hard to emotionally connect with the characters. An immigrant myself, I understand and respect that the immigrant experience is different for different people - and while parts of the narrative were impactful and resonated with me and others were more than a tad depressing (though the author attempts to balance the sad parts with some humor), I can’t say that I felt completely invested in the characters. However, this is an extremely well-written book that tackles themes of immigration, race and class with insight and honesty.