Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family

Description: Originally published in hardcover in 2019 by Scribner.

Brief description: Mitchell S. Jackson's debut novel won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His honors include a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, TED, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN, NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts), and the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and elsewhere. The author of Survival Math, he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

Review Quotes: "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...he captures the cyclical nature of poverty and neglect...The prose is a stunning mix of internal monologue and historical and religious references that he incorporates to tell his story...Thanks to Jackson's fresh voice, this powerful autobiography shines an important light on the generational problems of America's oft-forgotten urban communities."
--Publishers Weekly, starred

"A dynamic, impressive debut memoir from the Whiting Award-winning author of The Residue Years (2013)... 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."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred

"Award-winning novelist Jackson reclaims his history through an elegant memoir...one of rigorous self-examination, approaching his personal story with honesty and poetry...The result is an intimate portrayal of what makes us human...as much about a writer struggling to understand life's jubilations, mistakes, and losses, as it is a chronicle of a black man's place in America, appealing to fans of Kiese Laymon and Ta-Nehisi Coates."
--Library Journal, starred

"In the second-person vignettes scattered throughout Jackson's latest work, close-call scenarios threaten both the lives and freedom of Jackson's family members. After escaping death or incarceration, their frequent refrain is, 'Praise God!' Yet the sense one gets reading this portrait of an African American family is that, for many black Americans, livelihood rests on blind chance more than divine intervention ... Product-of-my-environment stories are common; beyond his candid self-portrayal as a willing-but-reluctant participant, what makes Jackson's take on this theme so compelling is his inquisitive and unflinching investigation of the conditions that shaped him."
--Booklist, starred