Survival Math
Notes on an All-American Family
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Descrição da editora
'A mesmerising book, full of story, truth, pain, lyricism, humour and astonishment: the stuff of a difficult life, fully lived, and masterfully transformed into art' SALMAN RUSHDIE
'Intimate and wise, poignant and compassionate, redemptive and raw. You have to read this beautiful book' CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild
An electrifying, dazzlingly written reckoning and an essential addition to the conversation about race and class, Survival Math takes its name from the calculations that 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.
Mitchell S. 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.
'Jackson's mesmerizing voice and style draws you into the survival calculations for millions of American kids and families, revealing a need-to-know reality for all of us' PIPER KERMAN, author of Orange is the New Black
'Jackson's musings skillfully illuminate the bloodlines, both inherited and earned, that pulse through the body of America's gang-graffitied carceral state' TYEHIMBA JESS, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Jackson (The Residue Years) gives an unvarnished look at urban life in this memoir about growing up black and poor in 1990s Portland, Ore. As the subtitle references, this is more than Jackson's story, and as he traces his great-grandparents' "exodus" from Alabama to Portland and the subsequent lives of his relatives and their struggles with addiction, prostitution, and incarceration he captures the cyclical nature of poverty and neglect. Jackson doesn't shy from describing his own life of crime, drugs, violence, and womanizing in vivid and unflinching detail, like when he gets paged to a drug deal only to find his mother waiting to buy from him. The prose is a stunning mix of second-person observations of various unnamed males in his family ("post a dubious decision to drop out of college your sophomore year you find yourself Sir-Yes-Sir'ing' at a naval base") and historical and religious references that he incorporates to tell his story. Interwoven with sections called "Survivor Files," which recount moments when the lives of those family members changed (such as when one relative found out that his daughter from a one-night stand had been adopted by the mother's new husband, and he realized he would never get to know her because he never would try), Jackson plays out his life's "revision" getting out of jail, pursuing an education against a backdrop of self- and social critique. Thanks to Jackson's fresh voice, this powerful autobiography shines an important light on the generational problems of America's oft-forgotten urban communities. This review has been updated to reflect changes to the final text of the book that were not included in PW's review copy.