If I Survive You

The collection’s protagonist and primary narrator, Trelawny, is a Jamaican American boy/man (the collection spans his childhood, adolescence, and part of his adulthood) who grows up in southern suburban Miami (Cutler Ridge and then Kendall) and then attends college at an unnamed midwestern university. A light-skinned, multiracial individual, Trelawney struggles to find belonging in any racial or ethnic group. Trelawny also struggles to find acceptance within his family: The sole member of his family to be born in the United States, Trelawny’s father and brother perceive him as “less Jamaican” than they are, and his bookish, academic interests further set him apart from his practical father and brother, both of whom work in construction.

Trelawny’s most important piece of characterization is his search for identity, which emerges in each of the collection’s eight, linked stories. The book begins with Trelawny’s account of being asked, “What are you?” (3) by a series of people who look at Trelawny and cannot quite place his racial background. A light-skinned American boy born to Jamaican parents in a diverse section of suburban Miami, Trelawny is not easily identifiable as Black, Jamaican, or American. To the Jamaicans at his school, he is too American in his speech patterns and mannerisms to be considered one of them.