Survival math : notes on an all-American family

Title:

Author:

Jackson, Mitchell S., author.

Personal Author:

Jackson, Mitchell S., author.

ISBN:

9781501131707

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Physical Description:

xv, 315 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Contents:

Prologue : Dear Marcus -- Part 1. Who are we? Exodus -- Composite Pops -- Matrimony -- Survivor files -- Part 2. What have we learned? Apples -- The scale -- Survivor files -- Part 3. What have we endured? American blood -- The pose -- Fast ten, slow twenty -- Survivor files -- Part 4. How do we proceed? Survival math -- Revision -- Survivor files -- Epilogue : Dear Justice.

Abstract:

With a poet's gifted ear, a novelist's sense of narrative, and a journalist's unsentimental eye, Mitchell S. Jackson candidly explores his tumultuous youth in the other America. Survival Math takes its name from the calculations Mitchell and his family made to keep safe--to stay alive--in their community, a small black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon blighted by drugs, violence, poverty, and governmental neglect. Survival Math is both a personal reckoning and a vital addition to the national conversation about race. Mitchell explores the Portland of his childhood, tracing the ways in which his family managed their lives in and around drugs, prostitution, gangs, and imprisonment as members of a tiny black population in one of the country's whitest cities. He discusses sex work and serial killers, gangs and guns, near-death experiences, composite fathers, the concept of "hustle," and the destructive power of drugs and addiction on family. In examining the conflicts within his family and community, Jackson presents a microcosm of struggle and survival in contemporary urban America--an exploration of the forces that shaped his life, his city, and the lives of so many black men like him. As Jackson charts his own path from drug dealer to published novelist, he gives us a heartbreaking, fascinating, lovingly rendered view of the injustices and victories, large and small, that defined his youth. -- amazon.com

Personal Subject:

Jackson, Mitchell S.

Subject Term:

African American families -- Oregon -- Portland -- Biography.

African American men -- Oregon -- Portland -- Biography.

Autobiography -- African American authors.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

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On Order

Summary

ONE OF TIME 'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
ONE OF BUZZFEED 'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019

An electrifying, dazzlingly written reckoning and an essential addition to the national conversation about race and class, Survival Math takes its name from the calculations award-winning author Mitchell S. Jackson made to survive the Portland, Oregon of his youth.

This dynamic book explores gangs and guns, near-death experiences, sex work, masculinity, composite fathers, the concept of "hustle," and the destructive power of addiction--all framed within the story of Jackson, his family, and his community. Lauded for its breathtaking pace, its tender portrayals, its stark candor, and its luminous style, Survival Math reveals on every page the searching intellect and originality of its author. The primary narrative, focused on understanding the antecedents of Jackson's family's experience, is complemented by poems composed from historical American documents as well as survivor files, which feature photographs and riveting short narratives of several of Jackson's male relatives. The sum of Survival Math 's parts is a highly original whole, one that reflects on the exigencies--over generations--that have shaped the lives of so many disenfranchised Americans. As essential as it is beautiful, as real as it is artful, Mitchell S. Jackson's nonfiction debut is a singular achievement, not to be missed.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A dynamic, impressive debut memoir from the Whiting Award-winning author of The Residue Years (2013).Following his award-winning debut novel, Jackson (Writing/New York Univ.) looks back on the specific chaos of historical, cultural, and familial forces that, despite the continued presence of open wounds, allowed them a chance at redemption in their home of Portland, Oregon. As he writes, "there's the history that's hit the books, what for all time should live in its ledgers, butI must keep alive the record of where we lived and how we lived and what we lived and died for," so it doesn't slip "into the ether." The author chronicles the complicated influences that have shaped his life, weaving through the Reaganomics era and its attendant uneven burden on black families, which led to expanding precariousness and subsequent street-scheming and entrenched pipe-dreaming. In his lyric memoir in essays, Jackson navigates family strife, crime, guns, toxic masculinity, substance abuse and addiction, and the meaning of "hustle," among countless other timely topics. The author also makes it clear that there's no room for pity, neither for his own choices nor those of his mother, who struggled with addiction, or the collection of black men he homages as the "composite Pops" who raised him. These are powerful stories of survival in the face of tremendous odds, rendered in a consistently intriguing hybrid of the street-cool hip-hop mathematics of Mos Def and the bluesy, ancestry-minded prison-cell work of Etheridge Knight (especially "The Idea of Ancestry"). The narrative hits its peak when Jackson motions beyond the tenuous spectacle of a moment to understand what came before it and to hope about what deliverance might come after it even while admitting, sometimes ashamedly so, that he is still wrestling with it all.A potent book that revels in the author's truthful experiences while maintaining the jagged-grain, keeping-it-a-100, natural storytelling that made The Residue Years a modern must-read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.