Si os sobrevivo

In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya have to flee Jamaica for Miami when political violence takes over Kingston. But the United States, as both the couple and their two children will learn, is far from being the Promised Land. Marginalized for being immigrants, the family members will have to face Hurricane Andrew and, years later, the great crisis of 2008, all in a house so cursed that even the goldfish prefers to jump out of the fish tank rather than stay there. Yet even as everything falls apart, they press on, propelled, often to their own detriment, by what the youngest son, Trelawny, calls "the exquisite, uncontrollable drive to survive." Masterfully constructed from heart and humor, If I Survive you orbits around Trelawny's struggle to make his way and find his place among financial calamities, racism and what is pure bad luck. With effervescent lyricism, an inimitable style, sly observations, and a contagious laugh, Escoffery shows us what it means to live among homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness.