is your identity tied to your place of birth if you're the child of immigrants are you perhaps living in two different worlds is belonging a choice or is it determined by skin color the question is what are you I'm Anne bocock and welcome to between the covers if I survive you is a collection of stories about a Jamaican family living in Florida the parents fled political violence in the 70s to give their boys a better life what happens is that America proves to be a pretty hard place to survive the author of this collection about race culture and class is Jonathan Discovery and he is here with me today welcome I am happy to be here Ann I am so happy you're here and first of all the praise for this book this is a debut the praise is stunning the words like electrifying extraordinary brilliant hilarious unmistakably original and I haven't mentioned that it's long listed for the national book awards so coming out of the gate how does this make you feel it feels really really great to get that kind of attention from my debut for my very first book and um yeah I couldn't be happier I congratulations it is such a special book and we're going to get into it now the storyline is very unusual now I have read I don't know how many books that have a mother daughter relationship here it's father son and it is particularly heartbreaking in in one story especially the one that's narrated by the father because there are words spoken that they can't take back and first of all do you think that it is it that this has been overlooked before the father-son relationship uh I think at least recently it may be something that uh hasn't been talked about enough we do talk a lot about uh masculinity and some of the more uh difficult ways in which we can find uh positive masculinity and so I was interested in exploring these father-son relationships and figuring out how we're attempting to figure out how it is we can pass down positive lessons and positive messages from fathers to Sons or how we can repair some of those uh father-son relationships if that's possible and Jonathan agreed that this really is Central to the stories in this book yeah um I mean I I have multiple characters who are trying to navigate these uh difficult situations with their fathers especially when we're following the sun characters one of which one of whom uh meets his father for the first time the summer he turns 13. and uh he you know when a child is abandoned by their father I was curious about this idea of can that ever be repaired and we follow these characters and see see what happens let's talk about that the character is Cookie if I'm pronouncing it correctly and as you said he was abandoned by his father he meets him for the first time at that critical age of 13. that in itself is a really big deal but there is a scene that that is heartbreaking this child is imagining himself he's with his father they're in the ocean he's imagining himself sinking to the bottom of the ocean on the chance that his father might try and save him right talk about that scene yeah um so we meet cookie at a time where he's doing really poorly in school his mother is kind of at her Wit's End and she is hopeful although skeptical of Cookie's father hoping that he will take him under his wing Cookie's father's name is ox and she hopes that Ox will take cookie under his wing and teach him about how to be a a boy in the world how to be a man in the world and um cookie is obsessed with this question of well if you abandoned me at Birth what kind of man can you be and will you in my time of need rescue me in a sense so cookie perhaps to his own detriment probably to his own detriment he wants to force an answer he wants to know will my father save me and I think some of the other uh male characters in the book are asking that same question yes absolutely the overview of we have a Jamaican immigrant family mother father two sons maker in the 70s because of political violence now it's interesting what they wanted and what they end up with in in this country I am curious about that I'm also curious about the research that you did are these stories you were told is there a family similarity there's a family similarity my my parents as a as a married couple along with my older brother they did leave Jamaica in the late 1970s around the same time that this fictionalized family leaves and eventually they settled in Miami uh there I was I grew up with a lot of these stories about what Jamaica was like when they were children and then that uh The Narrative of the turmoil turmoil that in their words uh transformed the island in the 1970s from a a largely peaceful place um to a place where they really had to worry about their their own safety and they were their move was more about finding safety rather than upward Mobility because they were middle-class Jamaicans and so for these characters I was interested in um basically those middle class Jamaicans having to now deal with uh economic precarity and and you know how how do they rebuild the middle class life in a country that may not be as welcoming to them as they would have hoped and you talk about safety so this is I'm going to Pivot here to Sonya who who is the mother yes she comes here for safety to have a safer life for her family and here's a Twist she ends up going back because she thinks it's going to be safer so that was interesting tell me about fear in this book fear and violence yeah for Sonya's part I think what she comes to the U.S with is a fear of physical violence being physically harmed but she at the same time she had not yet had a kind of racialized experience being a lighter-skinned black woman in Jamaica or predominantly black country and after decades in the United States of dealing with the the things that you do deal with as a as a black immigrant in this country she decided that she decides that it's better for her to feel the relative privilege of or the privilege of relative racelessness back in Jamaica where she is part of the um majority and she doesn't have to deal with the minoritized experience can I just say that I hope she gets her own book someday I she what she's complicated she's interesting and I just needed more of her so maybe absolutely I I hope so too working on it the first story in the book is titled flux it sets the state it did for me for this book and it talks about what are you and if you would indulge must please and read the first paragraph of flux because first of all it's in your words and the words are beautiful and it does set the stage it does I agree with you um this is from the the opening story influx it begins with what are you hollered from the perimeter of your front yard when you're nine younger probably you'll be asked again throughout Junior High and high school then out in the world in strip clubs in food courts over the phone and at various menial jobs the askers are expectant they demand immediate gratification their question lifts you slightly off your pre-adolescent toes tilting you not just because you don't understand it but because even if you did understand this question you wouldn't yet have an answer who are you throughout the book identity race is weaved throughout the stories are we not at the point yet where why are we asking this question and as a reader I I'm getting this from all of these stories and I'm thinking who is asking and why is it important people are asking I think people ask that question it was certainly my experience growing up in Miami that I was asked that question a lot and um I am still asked that question to this very day and I think people want to know what are you um in order to put you into a box where they can determine whether or not they can feel safe around you or they can they can make an attempt at knowing what to do with you they may feel based on preconceived notions preconceived prejudices um they they may want to be able to get either further away from you or closer to you based on those um those pre-formed ideas and I I think uh you know from The Writer's perspective it was an interesting um exercise in trying to figure out you know what what makes an identity what makes a a person um who they are how does a particular kind of body move through the world um as uh the the person who inhabits that body is is trying to to make a life particularly in a place a city like Miami and um that was a very interesting project of coming to know who trelawny my kind of main character uh who who he is let's talk about trelawny he makes my heart ache and then I'll turn the page and I'm laughing out loud so I don't know if that's something wrong with me but he is such an amazing character so thank you for that but he puts himself in these crazy situations these dead-end jobs and the one I have we have to talk about is he's collecting rent in an elder living facility everybody in that place hates him and tell me about this set the stage for that for that story right this is from the story independent living and trelawny has been kicked out of his father's house they have this huge falling out chalani starts living in his car he struggles to find a job and when he finally finds that job it's at a government subsidized low-income elderly housing apartment building uh on Miami Beach and um he is working in the office and he's put in the position where he is the face of rent increases meanwhile he is unhoused he's homeless himself and so he is filling this kind of role of um a person in power who can uh or at least people perceive him as having that power to uh determine whether or not they can stay in the building whether or not they can afford the rent and at the same time he doesn't have a house so he is doing things like sleeping in the tenants Apartments after they have died he's kind of taking these really menial bribes that the the tenants are leaving at the office he's trying to figure out how do I lift myself um up the economic ladder without uh becoming a bad person so he's struggling with that and I thought that him being in that role was a good opportunity to explore those Moral Moral complexity or um you know the question of what one might or might not do in order to save himself I learned a lot about him in that in that story and if that isn't the only dead-end job he has I mean there was one on Craigslist that probably should read the book and find out what that's about but that will surprise a lot of people that that that is a job there are storms that are brewing in this collection I mean literally and uh and metaphorically at the same time we're talking 1992 Hurricane Andrew how much of what this family went through was your experience I would say most of it tell me uh yeah my family was living in what's called Cutler Bay now um it was cut their Ridge at the time 1992 our townhouse was in the flood area so we had to basically leave our house pack bags figure out what's worth taking with us and um the the storm hit we went we went Inland to Kendall and by the time the hurricane had had hit and the worst of it was over our house was um you know it was unlivable at that point most of the roof was gone um we we kind of lost everything and we had to figure out how to rebuild after that and I was in 92 I was 11 years old and you know it was I think of it as this event that kind of ended my childhood because I had that childhood innocence before that and afterwards it was kind of like oh like you can have a full life one day and everything can be wiped away the the next and to me that's you know that's the the the sense of these uh a major storm like like Hurricane Andrew which is you know category five I think yeah and and you wrote about it beautifully I felt the pain of that family and and you you could see how it color you know colored all the decisions from that point on yeah Miami is a character in the book too I mean just as as trelawny or topper or Delano Miami the city of Miami is a character and it's not the same Miami that you see in other books so tell me about your Miami the Miami that's in this collection I think there I mean the truth is that there are so many different Miami's um that story we were just talking about Independent Living which is set in it's set in South Beach and honestly I worked at a place very similar to um to that and I thought you know um having these uh low-income people uh trying struggling to survive including my main character including trelawny in the midst of what's you know usually thought of as this kind of glamorous sexy place um where uh that's all about wealth and what you have um to me it was an opportunity to show that yes that is there but also there are these other people who also live there and who have to uh have to make a life and um it's to me that's what uh a lot of this book is is about it's kind of talking back to the idea that Miami is just for the bling and the glamor and the tourists and the tourism it's people also live here and grow up here and have to uh you know figure out how to make ends meet and sometimes in difficult ways can we talk about crafting this book because in my opinion this was just pure genius there the stories are not chronological they are different voices there's actually there's one story that is in an entire Jamaican dialect what was the starting point I wrote a story that was very short and it was about these brothers chelani and Delano and they were living in the house together that they grew up in but they were living together as adults and um Delano was falling down on his responsibilities he wasn't paying his share of the rent but Delano had traditionally been the the family favorite meanwhile their landlord father topper didn't really know how to handle it so he was putting the responsibility back onto that younger son who always felt like he was not the favorite and so a lot of that made its way into the book but that particular story um wound up getting cut out and I I knew I had the book when I wrote influx which was the story that I was just reading from because that gave it the kind of Direction Where trelawny could be uh he's being asked that question you know what are you and he in a sense internalizes that and starts to ask himself that same question like do how do I categorize myself when every time I answer the question people negate my my answer and they say well you you I'm not sure I believe your answer based on you know he might say he's Jamaican and they're saying well where's your Jamaican accent like you can't possibly be Jamaican or you don't look like the Jamaicans that uh I imagine for for whatever reason I love this that your starting point story gets cut out of the book so how challenging is it to put it together I know you just didn't you know pick you know names out of a hat and put in the the stories you specifically put them in this order I did I I didn't write them all necessarily in this order it was something where I the story I was telling you I cut out I thought that was going to operate as a kind of chapter one and it didn't and it didn't and I thought and I kept trying to write chapter two and I kept kind of failing to to do that um and so I had to step back and explore these characters as in you know in the most organic way I possibly can some of that made it into the book some of it did not but um again I think once I saw the the the shape of it which um that influx uh helped me see exactly where the momentum was going to come from uh that helped me start to put the the pieces in place and the more you each time I wrote a story I could see the last story that I wrote much more clearly and so the stories started to be in conversation with one another and that helped me actually complete the project you put that so well they are in conversation with you with with each other the title if I survive you makes so much sense it after you have read all of these stories because it's about surviving the world sometimes it's about surviving your own family and for all of these difficulties you will then use humor and I it's like what do I do now I feel should I be smiling at this passage that I just read that is brilliant how do you decide to do that I I think some of it is a result of thinking about coming up against insurmountable odds um where the if the power Dynamic is so skewed against you sometimes all you can do is laugh at the situation to Keep from Crying perhaps um I think the book does have that good balance of I mean you know I'm writing about things like poverty and I'm writing about you know these heavy topics race so uh ethnicity um and I I knew that needed to be balanced out in in any way I possibly could and so I I found humor to be um really helpful in doing that and I'm very glad to hear that you actually uh laughed and laughed out loud on you know you're reading something that is just so hard and so sad and there's an obstacle and then he does something that I go oh my God you can't help but laugh I think every reader is going to gravitate to something that's just a little different in this book who are you writing for that's a good question uh you know I I really hadn't read a character like trelawny um who again is somebody who struggles with figuring out you know why he doesn't quite fit within his own family why he has a difficult time finding his place in the world more generally and um you know the book's been out for for a little bit now and I've received these really wonderful messages from readers who are saying I'm seeing myself on the page for the first time and that just really fills my my heart with joy but I I also think anyone who's ever felt um a little bit skeptical of the boxes that they kind of try to shove us into or anyone who's ever felt a little bit excluded or on the outside of a of a thing of of a certain group might find a lot of Joy reading this book when someone says they see themselves on the pages of your story isn't that everything it is absolutely it is it's the most wonderful feeling that makes it all worth it in the few minutes that we have left I'd like to Pivot away from the book the book is if I survive you and talk a little bit more about you if if we could do that you were raised in Miami you're now a fellow University of Southern California and what's the difference and what's one thing you really miss about Miami oh miss about Miami I I missed the the late nights um you know it seems like everywhere else I've lived things kind of shut down at uh one p or sorry 1am and I love the the feeling of um I don't know just being able to uh stay out with friends and um keep the night going in this way that South Florida has a way of um allowing the party to continue uh which is and that's a strange thing I also have a lot of family still in South Florida and you know I miss my family all the time and uh there's I could go on and on Miami's such a beautiful city that uh well we know what you grew up here we also know that you went to Minnesota yes and then ended up in California so you're you're doing the the whole country pretty much I'm doing the Tour Boston Oakland As a child what did you read what did you gravitate to was there a particular genre oh uh I loved the Goosebumps series The R.L Stine yes any kind of uh I guess Dark Fantasy uh Slash horror slash mystery I was I was big into I was a big Hardy Boys reader as well um yeah I found myself reading a lot of uh well-plotted fiction that I'm I'm still very very interested in and I think has paid me paid me back a little bit we know in from the book that your characters have had some really crazy jobs so what was maybe one or two of the most unusual jobs you've had oh um I you know one I could think of is that I was working in high school I was working at a warehouse that distributed the Miami Heralds they were contracted to do so and I would actually clean that work the the warehouse before um before going to school in the morning and that was a I would have to wake up at 4 00 am and um it was just a really it might have been the circumstances that were around it that were kind of strange because people were constantly boycotting the place um I mean the the job where I worked in elderly housing on Miami Beach very very strange at one point I worked at both UPS and FedEx uh in the trailers and the feeders building walls having uh my superiors yelling at me to um uh build faster um and then lots of other odd jobs that are our best uh left off camera and in just the second that we have left on a serious note can we just your thoughts on book Banning oh I think it's the the most terrible thing I mean it's it's really a disservice to um particularly the the children who then uh I mean inevitably I think they they look for these books but um I think these are these are gaps in those children's ability to see themselves on the page and and it's a shame that anyone would want to take that away from a young person Jonathan escoffery what a pleasure it has been to meet you thank you so much for spending this time with us thank you for having me I'm Anne bocock I hope you can join me on the next between the covers [music]