If I Survive You

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“In Flux”

“Under the Ackee Tree”

“Odd Jobs”

“Pestilence”

“Splashdown”

“Independent Living”

“If He Suspected He’d Get Someone Killed This Morning, Delano Would Never Leave His Couch”

“If I Survive You”

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Jonathan Escoffery

Jonathan Escoffery is an American author born to Jamaican parents in the United States. Escoffery grew up in Miami and earned a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University, a master’s in fine arts from the University of Minnesota, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California. He is a recipient of Stanford University’s prestigious Stegner Fellowship, and If I Survive You is his first published book. It was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Escoffery was also awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2020.

Although his writing is not strictly autobiographical, Escoffery sees his novels as a “reflection” of reality, and he draws from his own multinational heritage and experiences growing up as a first-generation Jamaican American in Miami. He is interested in the push-pull experiences of coming of age in both his own immigrant household and in the multicultural space of Miami, where families from all over Latin America and the Caribbean must navigate between their home cultures and the social norms of the United States. He often speaks about how his parents nurtured his academic interests and were avid readers themselves. However, he also recalls the social world of his older brother: a group of young men who considered themselves “Jamaican first” and retained deep ties to the culture of their home country even as they grew up as American teenagers. He remembers his parents wanting him to excel in school and to embrace and embody the American dream, but also to retain his Jamaican identity. He’s termed it an “unwinnable dynamic,” and the difficulties of navigating between two cultures are one of his first text’s primary focal points.

Escoffery is also deeply interested in race and racism in the United States, and he recalls early encounters with racism in literature, such as in the Hardy Boys, a series he read avidly. These encounters left him angry and frustrated. Part of Escoffery’s stated goal in his own works of literature is to force his readers to confront their own stereotypes, expectations, and unexamined biases. The United States and Jamaica have their own distinct ways of looking at race. If I Survive You depicts these differences in an effort to ask readers to question the utility of racial categories as they understand them. Escoffery is also interested in subtle manifestations of racism like colorism, fetishization, and sexualization of the other.

Although in this collection he focuses more on race, racism, cultural identity, and the kaleidoscopic space of Miami, Escoffery has noted his work’s deep roots in the canonical works of multiethnic American literature from which he draws inspiration. Escoffery has noted Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street’s influence on his understanding of how linked stories can function. He has also highlighted the importance of Langston Hughes’s essays in the development of his own understanding of the relationship between race, masculinity, and writing. He has cited as well Nella Larson’s Quicksand, an account of a biracial teacher’s experiences in Chicago.

Historical Context: Hurricane Andrew

Hurricanes loom large over this text, and although Escoffery uses their imagery to heighten his depictions of familial discord, he is also interested in the socioeconomic impact of Hurricane Andrew in particular, especially within immigrant communities in South Florida. Andrew was a category five storm that devastated the Bahamas, South Florida, and Louisiana in 1992. It is the most destructive hurricane to have ever hit South Florida and remains one of costliest. Storms do not often make landfall at category five, the greatest possible strength; Andrew is one of only four hurricanes to do so in the United States. Although it brought severe destruction to the Bahamas and Louisiana, the storm’s greatest impact was felt in South Florida: It passed directly over Homestead (an agricultural community south of Miami) and Cutler Bay, the south Miami neighborhood where If I Survive You’s protagonist Trelawny lives with his family. Andrew destroyed more than 63,000 homes, partially destroyed 124,00 others, and caused more than $27 billion in damage. Some 1.4 million people lost power. Many were without power for more than a month. Many people were injured, and 65 people died.

Many representations of Andrew in popular culture focus on the many animals released back into the wild as a result. Both in the Everglades and in Miami, Andrew destroyed zoos and sanctuaries; there are still flocks of wild parrots in the Miami area whose presence in the community can be traced back to Andrew. However, the storm’s destruction was most acutely felt by the region’s economically disadvantaged and immigrant communities. In these areas, rebuilding was difficult and even impossible for many.

Andrew’s main destructive force was wind rather than storm surge, and because of where it made landfall, its impact was felt primarily in the southern tip of Florida. This area spanned from the south Miami neighborhood of Kendall, where Trelawny and his mother ultimately move, to Key Largo. Prior to the hurricane, a building boom had taken place, generating exponential new growth in south Miami housing; this is the boom that displaced the hordes of insects and crabs Escoffery writes about in “Pestilence.” Many homes were built quickly from low-quality materials. Intended for purchase by low-income families and recent immigrants, the focus had been on speed rather than durability. Accordingly, when it came to these poorly built buildings, the destruction was severe. Few houses escaped without any damage.

Escoffery’s description of Topper’s efforts to rebuild his home on his own with a limited budget offers an accurate reflection of the aftermath of Andrew. The Trelawny family’s struggles represent the post-hurricane experience for many families like his in suburban south Miami. Escoffery is interested in “reflecting reality,” which includes for him the myriad ways that structural inequality affects people of color and immigrants in the United States. The difficult aftermath of Hurricane Andrew becomes, along with the text’s representation of the financial crash of 2008, a key way of illustrating for readers the unequal impact of disasters, climate and otherwise, on under-resourced communities. Andrew’s destruction, much like the fallout from the 2008 crash, was felt more acutely by those, like Trelawny’s family, who lived without financial safety nets.