Short Stories & Anthologies
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If I Survive You
"If I Survive You is a collection of connected short stories that reads like a novel, that reads like real life, that reads like fiction written at the highest level." ―Ann Patchett • "Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you've read before." ―Marlon James • "A ravishing debut." ―The New Yorker
A September 2022 IndieNext Pick, and named a Best Book of September by Amazon and Apple Books. Named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Buzzfeed, the Los Angeles Times, TIME, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Shondaland, Real Simple, Kirkus, The Root, The Millions, and Literary Hub.
A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami, and introduces a generational storyteller.
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls "the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive."
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper―himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica―Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.
Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.
A September 2022 IndieNext Pick, and named a Best Book of September by Amazon and Apple Books. Named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Buzzfeed, the Los Angeles Times, TIME, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Shondaland, Real Simple, Kirkus, The Root, The Millions, and Literary Hub.
A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami, and introduces a generational storyteller.
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls "the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive."
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper―himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica―Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.
Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.
Editorial Reviews
"A ravishing debut . . . There's peacocking humor, capers, and passages of shuddering eroticism. The book feels thrillingly free . . . [Escoffery's] stories also stress the ebullience, the possibility, that can emerge from in-betweenness." ―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
"Jonathan Escoffery's radiant collection of linked stories, If I Survive You, may well be the buzziest debut of 2022. . . . In crystalline prose, Escoffery evokes the fluorescent textures of Miami, tapping Caribbean traditions, immigrant aspirations, and familial and communal bonds." ―Hamilton Cain, OprahDaily
"In prose that spans various voices and dialects―Jamaican patois, the Queen's English―Escoffery illuminates the ties that bind its strivers to each other through pain, reckoning, arboricide, and maybe even redemption." ―Matthew Schneier, Vulture
"One of the most refreshing fiction debuts I've read in years . . . With effortlessly transporting language and characters that are unforgettable in their singularity, this book charmed its way into my heart, where it will stay for a long time." ―David Vogel, Buzzfeed
"There are plenty of signs Jonathan Escoffery's debut is something special . . . But perhaps most impressive is the way these linked stories about a working-class Jamaican family living in Florida inspire a skillfully engineered emotional reaction. One left me floored, another broke my heart, and yet another made me gasp . . . this is literary fiction at its most engaging, satisfying, and affecting." ―Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Both outrageously funny and a piercing look at life in America, If I Survive You is the kind of book you'll think about long after you finish it." ―Real Simple
"This compelling set of interrelated short stories . . . [offer] unique insight into issues of race and belonging . . . A revelatory work, full of a young man's questioning and told in a distinctive voice, this co...
"Jonathan Escoffery's radiant collection of linked stories, If I Survive You, may well be the buzziest debut of 2022. . . . In crystalline prose, Escoffery evokes the fluorescent textures of Miami, tapping Caribbean traditions, immigrant aspirations, and familial and communal bonds." ―Hamilton Cain, OprahDaily
"In prose that spans various voices and dialects―Jamaican patois, the Queen's English―Escoffery illuminates the ties that bind its strivers to each other through pain, reckoning, arboricide, and maybe even redemption." ―Matthew Schneier, Vulture
"One of the most refreshing fiction debuts I've read in years . . . With effortlessly transporting language and characters that are unforgettable in their singularity, this book charmed its way into my heart, where it will stay for a long time." ―David Vogel, Buzzfeed
"There are plenty of signs Jonathan Escoffery's debut is something special . . . But perhaps most impressive is the way these linked stories about a working-class Jamaican family living in Florida inspire a skillfully engineered emotional reaction. One left me floored, another broke my heart, and yet another made me gasp . . . this is literary fiction at its most engaging, satisfying, and affecting." ―Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Both outrageously funny and a piercing look at life in America, If I Survive You is the kind of book you'll think about long after you finish it." ―Real Simple
"This compelling set of interrelated short stories . . . [offer] unique insight into issues of race and belonging . . . A revelatory work, full of a young man's questioning and told in a distinctive voice, this co...
