'If I Survive You' author, Jonathan Escoffery, reads at Notre Dame

SOUTH BEND — The University of Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program presents a reading by Jonathan Escoffery at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 in Room 300 O’Shaughnessy Hall.

Escoffery is the author of “If I Survive You,” a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice and an IndieNext Pick.

A collection of connected short stories, “If I Survive You” follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami.

In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land.

Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008recession, the characters unravel what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness.

As the central character, younger son Trelawny struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper, Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs.

Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin Cukie looks for a father who doesn’t want to be found.

Admission is free.

For more information, visit english.nd.edu/news-events/events/2023/09/20/creative-writing-reading-series-ft-jonathan-escoffery/

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: 'If I Survive You' author reads at Notre Dame