If I Survive You

by Jonathan Escoffery

Genres: Anthologies

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

'Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory' MARLON JAMES

'An absolute delight to read' DIANA EVANS

'Superb … A strong, much needed new voice in our literature' PERCIVAL EVERETT

'A compelling hurricane of a book' ANN PATCHETT

A major debut that follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism and Hurricane Andrew.

1979. Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm.

Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society which regards him with suspicion, greeting him with the puzzled question ‘What are you?’

Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it.

As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew – they find themselves increasingly pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart?

If I Survive You pulses with inimitable style, heart and barbed humour while unravelling what it means to carve out an existence between cultures, homes and pay checks. It announces Jonathan Escoffery as a chronicler of life at its most gruesome and hopeful.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

‘A debut so brilliant it stopped me in my tracks … Astonishing’ I NEWSPAPER

'Utterly unstoppable … a book that you simply do not want to end' IRISH TIMES

'A commanding debut from a talent to watch' OBSERVER

'Sings with authenticity and heart' ANOTHER

‘Astonishingly compact and engaging … Dazzling' JOYCE CAROL OATES

A most anticipated Book of 2023 in AnOther Magazine, Huffington Post UK and i Newspaper

Release date: September 6, 2022

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Print pages: 272

Sample

IN FLUX

 

It begins with What are you? hollered from the perimeter of your front yard when you're nine—younger, probably. You'll be asked again throughout junior high and high school, then out in the world, in strip clubs, in food courts, over the phone, and at various menial jobs. The askers are expectant. They demand immediate gratification. Their question lifts you slightly off your preadolescent toes, tilting you, not just because you don't understand it, but because even if you did understand this question, you wouldn't yet have an answer.

Perhaps it starts with What language is your mother speaking? This might be the genesis, not because it comes first, but because at least on this occasion you have some context for the question when it arrives.

You immediately resent this question.

"Why's your mother talk so funny?" your neighbor insists.

Your mother calls to you from the front porch, has called from this perch overlooking the sloping yard since you were allowed to join the neighborhood kids in play. Always, this signals that playtime is over, only now shame has latched itself to the ritual.

Perhaps you'd hoped no one would ever notice. Perhaps you'd never noticed it yourself. Perhaps you ask in shallow protest, "What do you mean, 'What language'?" Maybe you only think it. Ultimately, you mutter, "English. She's speaking English," before going inside, head tucked in embarrassment.

In this moment, for the first time, you are ashamed of your mother, and you are ashamed of yourself for not defending her. More than to be cowardly and disloyal, though, it's shameful to be foreign. If you've learned anything during your short residence on earth, you've learned this.

It's America and it's the eighties, and at school, in class, you pledge to one and one flag only, the Stars and Stripes. Greatest country on earth is the morning anthem. It's the lesson plan, a mantra, drilled into you day in, day out—a fact as inarguable as two plus two equaling four—and what you start to hear, as you repeat this to yourself, is the implication that all other nations, though other nations are seldom mentioned in school, are inferior.

You believe this.

It's an easy lesson to internalize, except that your brother, Delano; your parents; nearly all your living relatives are Jamaican. When your play cousin moves from Kingston to Miami, to your Cutler Ridge neighborhood, winding up in your third-grade class, refusing to pledge allegiance to your flag, you know to distance yourself from her. You say a quiet thanks that your last names are different.

If you'd had any context for the question of what you "are" when it first came, you might have answered, American.

You were born in the United States and you've got the paperwork to prove it. You feel pride in this fact, this inalienable status. You belt Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." on the Fourth of July, and even more emphatically after visiting your parents' island nation for two weeks in your ninth summer. You disagree with every aspect of the island life, down to the general lack of central air-conditioning. You prefer burgers and hot dogs to jerked or curried anything.

Back at home your parents accuse you of speaking, and even acting, like a real Yankee. But if by Yankee they mean American, you embrace it. "I speak English," you respond.

Your parents' patois and what many deem an indecipherable accent still play as normal, almost unnoticeable against your ears, except that it is increasingly paired with the punitive. For instance, when your mother says, "Unoo can spill di t'ing on di tile, but unoo can' clean it?"

And your brother says, "No me, Mummy."

And you say, "I didn't do it, Mom."

She'll say, "Den who did? Mus' be a duppy."

The duppy becomes the scapegoat for all the inexplicable activity that takes place in and outside your house. The duppy broke your mother's vase, then tried to glue it back together. The duppy hid your brother's report card underneath his mattress. The duppy possessed your father, dragged his body out for drinks after work, and didn't bring him home until morning.

A duppy, or ghost, or even a grown man, can be difficult to discipline, so you and your brother alone share the punishments.

* * *

In school, when your world geography project is announced and you're made to choose from a list of countries to present on, you choose Mongolia. It's not till another student chooses Jamaica that you consider the tiny island a worthy option.

Part of your project requires preparing a dish native to the country you've chosen. This is fourth grade. Your mothers do the cooking. When they meet one another on presentation day, eyes ringed dark from having wrestled with foreign recipes late into the night, they nod imperceptibly, too exhausted for pleasantries.

As your classmate begins her presentation on Jamaica, your mother sucks her teeth—a sound akin to industrial-strength Velcro ripping apart—drawing glances from several of the other parents. "Me could've brought in leftovers," she whispers, leaning in, "if only you chose home." .