He is not black enough, nor white enough, and even less Latino. From the first pages of Jonathan Escoffery’s book, the problem is posed. How do you navigate being a child of Jamaican descent in an American society that struggles with many forms of racism? By exploring this search for identity, If I Survive You “offers a new and ironic look at the construction of oneself”greeted The New Yorker, during the American release of the work, in 2022.
Born in 1980 in Texas to Jamaican parents, Jonathan Escoffery grew up in Miami. Published in French by Albin Michel on September 25, 2024, his first book takes the form of a collection of short stories all linked together and largely inspired by his life.
The reality of a Jamaican family
In the opening, he narrates the life of Trelawny. The only member of his Jamaican family to be born in the United States, the child struggles with racial and societal injunctions, whether at home or at school, in a predominantly Hispanic city of Miami. So he “navigates between several facets of his identity, arouses the anger of his father when he models his accent and style on those of black Americans, then is treated as an intruder and a Yank during a stay in Jamaica”summary The New York Times.
In this in-between, the writer points out to what extent “people misunderstand the daily reality of a poor family or one of Jamaican origin in the United States”, notes the New Yorkerwho appreciates“ingenuity” of his fiction.
The eight stories that make up the book “juggle between the first, second and third person, between past, present and future. One of the texts is sprinkled with Jamaican patois, another with expressions typical of the black American community. The author alternates between boastful humor, pirouettes and erotic passages that will give you chills”summarizes the New York magazine.
This virtuosity in navigating between languages, people and worlds also impressed the New York Times. Escoffery invites readers “to share Trelawny’s inner quest, who seeks to discover who he really is – if that is possible – by enduring with him the frustration and micro-aggressions of everyday life”; then going back to his father’s youth and his decision to leave Jamaica for the United States, in a brilliant transcription of Jamaican Creole, notes the daily.
“The contrast between these two ‘you’s’ – the pure product of American self-construction on the one hand, the old-fashioned resourceful person with little interest in introspection on the other – fuels the tension around which s “articulates the novel.”
Filial torments
This tension gives meaning to the title of the book, and ultimately takes on a universal significance, underlining for its part the Los Angeles Times. California daily critic Lynn Steger Strong sees it as an ingenious way to study “the way our parents shape us, by what they offer us, but also by what they do not know how to give us – notably their inability to teach us how to live”.
The latter particularly appreciated the description of Florida. “This is where I grew up. And Escoffery has an extraordinary talent for describing the way this region penetrates deep within you.”
And if some critics note pitfalls – the New York Times judging certain scenes less convincing, while according to the Los Angeles Times, “each story seems to have been designed to be read independently of the others, and the book suffers somewhat as a result” – everyone recognizes the freshness of Jonathan Escoffery’s work. A book that does not lack humor and lucidity to dissect the identity torments of a son of immigrants, in today’s America.
