Jonathan Escoffery’s stories flourish in the middle of a Venn diagram, in a realm somewhere between autobiography and true-to-life fiction. The child of Jamaican immigrants, he writes about Trelawney, the younger son of Topper and Sanya, who fled Kingston for Miami in the 1970s, revealing the tensions involved in assimilation and cultural preservation. Told through a mix of first- and second-person narration, Escoffery also seamlessly switches from standard English to Jamaican patois for a story from the perspective of Trewlaney’s father—just one of many moving pieces in his debut collection, which was longlisted for a National Book Award. —Laura Zornosa
Buy Now: If I Survive You on Bookshop | Amazon
More Must-Reads From TIME
- The Case for Mediocrity
- How Russia Is Recruiting Cubans to Fight in Ukraine
- Paul Hollywood Answers All of Your Questions About The Great British Baking Show
- Meet the 2023 TIME100 Next: the Emerging Leaders Shaping the World
- Oprah and Arthur C. Brooks: How to Separate Work From Your Identity
- How Canada and India's Relationship Crumbled
- You Don’t Have to Like Wrestling to Love Netflix’s Excellent Wrestlers
- The Most Anticipated Books, Movies, TV, and Music of Fall 2023
- Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time
