If I Survive You

“In this moment, for the first time, you are ashamed of your mother, and you are ashamed of yourself for not defending her. More than to be cowardly and disloyal though it’s shameful to be foreign.”

This passage speaks to how immigration interacts with and shapes cultural identity. Trelawny’s mother speaks English with a Jamaican accent. As a result, both white and African Americans view the family as “other.” Part of Trelawny’s adolescence is spent coming to terms with his cultural identity and figuring out how to define himself on his own terms.

“You’re Black, Trelawny. In Jamaica we weren’t, but here we are. There’s a one-drop rule.”

This passage speaks to the novel’s interest in how race, culture, and socioeconomic status interact to shape identity and society’s perception of identity. Trelawny is light-skinned. As a result, he is perceived as multiracial by some, Black by others, and ambiguous by many. In Jamaica, his family would have been considered multiracial, but Delano explains to him that for most Americans, they are Black. Part of Trelawny’s interpersonal difficulties stem from his exclusion from all groups: he is “not Black enough” to hang out with the other Jamaican kids, but too Black for white and Hispanic students. No one seems willing to accept him for who he is or to refrain from trying to categorize him in the first place.

“You sit Delano and Trelawney down for breakfast the next morning and you try to teach them culture to make sure it survive.”

This passage speaks to the challenge of sustaining cultural identity in the context of immigration. In it, the ackee tree, symbolic of Jamaican cultural identity, becomes part of a lesson on Jamaican heritage that Topper tries to teach to his sons. Trelawny is less interested in the fruit than his brother, which speaks to their identitarian differences as well as to their father’s preference for Delano, the son who best embodies Jamaican identity and thereby affirms Topper’s own sustained belonging to his culture.

“One day, while you and Trelawney out at lunch, Delano page you and say him have surprise, and you’re to meet him at the construction site in Palmetto Bay. When the two of you reach, you see is full-grown ackee tree Delano have him crew transplant in the back yard.”

This passage describes the origins of Topper’s ackee tree. Delano, the favorite son and the son who is the most Jamaican, gives the tree, a symbol of Jamaican cultural identity, to his father. To Trelawny, the tree also symbolizes the father-son bond between Topper and Delano, which by its nature marks the extent to which the two exclude Trelawny.

“Anyway, you can tell Trelawny nothing. Him think them teach him everything up north and the whole of Miami is ignorant. When him reach back, you tell him that with all the job loss him better stay away from certain neighborhood, and the boy say, there’s no such thing as a bad neighborhood, and its systemic racism and white-collar greed cause the crime. Like him knowing the source can stop bullet; like him wills it down with robber and explain to him ‘bout subprime mortgage and school-to-prison pipeline.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. Trelawny, having been born and educated entirely in the United States, is much more American than his brother. He possesses a body of knowledge that Delano and Topper lack, and it comes between them. He reaches for abstract ideas such as institutional racism to explain social ills, and although Topper does not deny the impact of inequality, he is not as interested as his son in thinking about the root causes of social problems. He is much more practical in his interests and in his orientation toward the world. 

“I had bothered, had faithfully followed the upward mobility playbook in order to wind up an extraordinary failure.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Intersectionality, Socioeconomic Status, and Race as well as to the text’s interest in the unequal impact of the 2008 financial crash on Americans already disadvantaged by race and socioeconomic status. Trelawny has sought out a college degree and worked hard. However, that labor is not enough to secure him a job, let alone entrance into the middle class.

“But what else was out there for the class of 2009? The forty-thousand-dollars-a-year entry-level positions I’d been promised all my life no longer existed post-recession, and even the lowliest jobs wanted five-plus years of experience. I graduated with a 4.0 and couldn’t get an interview for an unpaid internship.”

This passage also speaks to the theme of Intersectionality, Socioeconomic Status, and Race. Although there are job opportunities available to students whose families can subsidize their unpaid internships, students like Trelawny, who have no safety net, are unable to find work, even with college degrees. This injustice is a manifestation of systemic and institutional inequality, and the examination of the origins of that inequality preoccupies Trelawny for much of the text.

“I’d found zero catharsis in striking my father’s ackee tree. Do you understand how difficult it is to fell a tree with an ax? I’d battered myself against it, spending myself, and still it towered. At my brother’s reconciliation dinner, though, he reported that the tree’s fruit had rotted overnight and it had yet to produce more. Trauma was the word he used. My brother is an arborist and so he feels qualified to use such a word.”

This passage is an example of the symbolism of the ackee tree. Trelawny tries to destroy the symbol of his father’s exclusionary relationship with his brother, but it brings him no relief. He will not feel better about these relationships until the very last lines of the book, when he forgives his father and Delano and decides to move on.

“Mom said it was the construction, that the onslaught of new development the eighties had ushered in had disturbed the animals and that the clearing of land sent them into a frenzy.”

This passage speaks to the novel’s setting. In South Miami, urban development went unchecked for decades, displacing much of the local flora and fauna. The suburban neighborhood in which Trelawny grew up, with its diversity and accompanying disharmony among various ethnic groups, shaped his identity development. The turmoil of the local animal and insect populations is representative of the social turmoil among the various people living in this area. It is also representative of his familial turmoil, and along with hurricanes, the insect plagues are a signal to the reader that all is not well in this space.

“When Daddy dies, I get the house, my brother told me while we were out walking Double.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. Topper favors Delano, and this favoritism is a source of pain and unhappiness for Trelawny. It also affects his identity development, as he does not feel as Jamaican as his father or his brother. This feeling is heightened by their exclusionary behavior, and it is a source of stress and division for all three men.

“A plague can transmogrify, and in August of 1992 ours shifted into 175 mile-per-hour winds.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. There are many times in which the author uses imagery to symbolize his main thematic concerns, and the plague of insects, along with hurricanes and the mythical “Duppy,” all gesture toward the instability that roils below the surface and characterizes this family.

“The summer he turned thirteen, Cukie Panton set out for the Florida Keys to meet his father for the first time.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. Although the primary focus of the collection is Trelawny and his immediate family, his cousin Cukie also has a fractured family and, just as it does for Trelawny, immigration affects how his family members relate to one another and understand themselves.

“Taped to the freezer is a faded poster. It’s a picture of a woman, dripping in a red T-shirt, the word JAMAICA flipped backward across her chest. And in the reflection, in the top right corner of the poster, above a scribbled signature, Cukie can just make out a heart.”

This passage speaks to the novel’s interest in race. In this story, Cukie’s father’s racism takes the form of sexualization, both of Jamaican women in general and Cukie’s mother in particular. Trelawny, too, experiences this form of sexualized racism, as well as Delano, albeit to a lesser degree. The author’s depiction of the complex politics of race and sex is meant to show the reader that not all racism involves discrimination or physical violence: despite its dehumanizing nature, it can also be intimate.

“Cukie considers what he owes to Julius: more than passivity and inaction; more than minimum-wage provision. He owes him everything he can give, everything he can take.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. In it, Cukie vows to do a better job parenting than his own father did. Although much of this text focuses on fractured familial bonds, there is also a hopeful, redemptive undercurrent: Both Cukie and Trelawny seek to repair broken relationships and move forward in a healthier way than did the previous generation.

“There lies the largest misconception people have about government-subsidized housing. People erroneously figure it’s in our interest to charge the elderly as little rent as possible. In reality Silver Towers’ mission is threefold: increase the property’s value, maintain high occupancy, and keep rents climbing.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Intersectionality, Socioeconomic Status, and Race. The senior living facility where Trelawny is able to find a job does not value its tenants, and its financial practices are predatory. It is a microcosm of the broader systems of the United States. Trelawny notes the preponderance of immigrants and people of color among the residents, and he observes how those at the margins of society are not afforded the same opportunities as their more affluent (and often whiter) neighbors. 

“It might be hyperbole to say I identify with my tenants, most of whom are asylum seekers and refugees, but I can empathize well enough.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Intersectionality, Socioeconomic Status, and Race. So much of this text aims to show the readers the unequal impact of the 2008 economic downturn, and Trelawny is emblematic of how, for people of color, socioeconomic status can be more important than education: Trelawny has a college degree and a job, but is still living out of his car. He has more in common with the tenants, who are also preyed upon by an unfair system, than he does with his boss or with the other administrators at the senior living facility.

“‘They act like there’s no color back on the island,’ El Jefe once told me. ‘They act like Africa doesn’t pump through Cuba’s veins.’”

This passage speaks to the novel’s complex, in-depth portrait of race and racial identity. Here, Cuban culture is at issue, and Trelawny and his boss discuss how Cubans often deny the reality of Afro-Cuban identity. In truth, Cuban identity is an amalgam of Hispanic, African, and other backgrounds. It is not as whitewashed as many would like to believe.

“American men, Southerners and Midwesterners especially, stop to ask where these young women are from. More often, they drunkenly slur “What are you?” To which the hostesses smile and name their country of origin. These dickheads are just that for asking, but I linger when they do, because I also want to know.”

This passage is another example of the complex relationship between racism and sexualization depicted in the novel. Cukie’s father, several of Trelawny’s girlfriends, and many white tourists in Miami sexualize people of color even as they stigmatize them. Their attraction to what they perceive of as “exotic” sexuality is revealed as racism through the ways in which they stereotype people of color and see them solely through the lens of their “otherness.”

“Delano once considered himself an optimist, someone who controlled his own fate. Before the 2008 recession, life had mostly gone his way.”

This passage is part of the novel’s broader interest in the impact of the 2008 crash on communities of color already marginalized within what Trelawny would term systemically racist society. There are very few possibilities open to Trelawny and his family after 2008, ad their lack of opportunities is in no small part caused by their status both as part of an immigrant community and as men of color.

“I’m supposed to be a performer.”

This quote speaks to the unspoken-of thread that connects Delano, Trelawny, and their father: Each man is in some way artistic, and yet because of their socioeconomic status and immigration history, they are forced into more practical work. This pressure speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics and to the theme of Intersectionality, Socioeconomic Status, and Race: Rather than uniting father and sons, their shared interest in the arts becomes a source of strife in the family. Because they are much more interested in the arts than in the fields where they end up working, each man struggles to find happiness.

“As the hot wind rakes your father like a dead palm frond, you tell him that you won’t buy his house. But as hours pass, then days, the idea spreads, moss-like in your mind.” 

This passage speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. Although Trelawny knows that buying his father’s house is not a sound economic decision, the very fact that it had been intended for his brother makes him covet it. The three have a relationship characterized by disfunction and disharmony, and it is not until the end of the text that there is some hope for redemption and reconciliation.

“It’s just that every time I visit she reminds me, if you have his babies, they’ll never have blue eyes.”

This passage speaks to the novel’s representation of racism, subtle and otherwise. Trelawny often experiences racism in his romantic relationships, and this depiction is meant to convey to the reader the idea that racism is not always violent or overtly discriminatory. Many of Trelawny’s girlfriends sexualize or stigmatize Trelawny because of his racial background. They are not able to escape their unexamined biases, even in the space of a romantic relationship.

“‘We’re not all for sale’ you say ‘Your money doesn’t entitle you to everything.’”

This passage also speaks to the novel’s representation of racism. Morgan and her husband claim not to be racist and make a show of supporting Trelawny when he is the victim of racism in their condo building. Nonetheless, they are not without their own deep prejudices, and Trelawny’s interactions with them lay those racist ideological orientations bare.