If I Survive You (2022) by Jonathan Escoffery

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

If I Survive You (2022)

by Jonathan Escoffery

Cutler Bay, Florida

Florida: 10/21

   I am CRUSHING the Florida chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  This chapter is filled with 200 page volumes of inter-connected short stories from the POV of different ethnicities etc. Trelawny, the main protagonist of If I Survive You, is the child of two Jamaican immigrants- though, as depicted in this book, it is quite frequent for Jamaicans to go back and forth BETWEEN the US and Jamaica- something like the situation for other Caribbean groups, Puerto Rican's of course, but also Dominicans.  Most Jamaican immigrants come over on work visa's to do a specific job- illegal immigration isn't uncommon, but mostly immigrant Jamaicans are legal.   Trelawny is unusual in the context of African American culture in Florida because his father is mostly white.  The opening of If I Survive You is about life in high school as someone who doesn't fit in with white, black or latino ethnic groups.   The alienation is compounded when Trelawny goes off to the Midwest for college, while his brother stays behind to do post-Hurricane Andrew reconstruction with his Dad.  

  Mom returns to Jamaica after divorcing Dad, and Trelawny sinks into a non-ethnically specific post-college malaise recognizable to anyone, and lives out of his car as he tries to make a life for himself.  We also hear about other characters- the brother, a cousin and his father.