If I Survive You - Jonathan Escoffery

 

As I continue to explore the thirteen 2023 Booker Prize nominees (two of the books will not actually be published in the U.S. until after the prize winner is announced), Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You has been the most pleasant surprise to me so far. By its very nature, this one is unusual because it is the only book of short stories on a nominee list otherwise comprised of twelve novels. Escoffery's eight stories, however, are so well connected that If I Survive You tells a more coherent story than several of the Booker novels I've read this year. 

This is the 1970s coming-of-age story of two brothers, one born in Jamaica where his parents then lived, the other in Miami after the family fled Jamaican political violence for a safer life in the United States. Although the stories are mostly told from the point of view of Trelawny, the youngest of the two brothers, Escoffery sometimes uses first person, sometimes second person, and sometimes third to tell them.

Trelawny is the only member of the family born in the U.S. but that doesn't keep him from being the family's most conflicted member. As a boy, he struggles to find a comfortable niche for himself among his fellow public school students but soon learns that no group will have him around for long. Trelawny is a light-skinned Jamaican, so he is not black enough for the Blacks to claim him; but he is obviously enough not white that the White students don't want him around either; and although he is often at first glance mistaken for a Hispanic, Trelawny speaks no Spanish, so the hispanic kids also want no part of him. 

The family begins to fall apart almost from the beginning because Topper, the boys' father, is more interested in drinking and chasing women than he is in bringing home a regular paycheck. Then Sanya, their mother, becomes so disillusioned with her husband and life in America that she returns to Jamaica on her own, only to find that she no longer feels Jamaican enough to live in that country. And Delano, Trelawny's older brother, seems to believe that being first born entitles him to disinherit Trelawny. So he does so.

The eight stories in If I Survive You are chronologically linked together so well that they could just as easily be called chapters in a novel as called short stories, so it's easy to see why the Booker judges included the book on their shortlist. The stories combine to portray vividly the immigrant experience, especially that of first generation Americans as they walk the fine line between the culture of their parents and that of the only country they themselves have ever known. 

This is a worthy addition to the 2023 Booker shortlist, and I would not be at all surprised if it were to win the prize.

Jonathan Escoffery jacket photo