Retrato do autor

Mitchell S. Jackson

Autor(a) de Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family

3+ Works 333 Membros 9 Críticas

About the Author

Includes the name: Mitchell Jackson

Obras por Mitchell S. Jackson

Associated Works

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race (2016) — Contribuidor — 848 exemplares
Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing (2002) — Contribuidor — 125 exemplares
Everyday People: The Color of Life--a Short Story Anthology (2018) — Contribuidor — 41 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Portland, Oregon, USA

Membros

Críticas

If I were to re-read Odysseus’ trials with Circe and the many other women of his travels home from the Trojan War, I would get a sense of the scope of Mitchell Jackson’s journey toward an understanding of his own behaviour toward women in that crazy off-kilter society in which he grew up in Portland, Oregon.

Jackson knows his relations with women are very problematic. He promises but he cannot deliver. Emotionally. In commitment. Even giving women basic respect. But he doesn’t seem to pay for it until his daughter grows up and his behaviour fills him with guilt and dread.

Jackson’s memoir/thought experiment “Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family” at times reads like The Odyssey, at other times like Dante’s visit to the underworld, and so much like a satire of American life.

This is no satire.

It is his life and the recollections of the many men in his family who did time in the slammer, or had a life “gangbanging”, or drug addiction, or early death. This is an “All-American” family in spite of what white supremacists would like us to believe. This is a story of one not particularly unusual black family in America.

As a youth Jackson navigates between the aspirations of his mother that he get an education and create a stable life for himself and the lives of his many male role models whose great achievements will have been to survive gangstas, gangs, a complex judicial system, the opportunities of dealing in drugs.

His own family, though, is mired in violence and drugs and splintered family relations. That Jackson himself didn’t do upwards of five years in a high security prison was unusual in his family.

Are they bad people or to be admired when they succeed given the rules of the game?

Whether or not you took up drug dealing in his neighbourhood, you had to take sides and create a survivable persona. You had to speak a certain way. You had to walk a certain way, and you had to pay homage to dangerous characters.

I grew up in a somewhat bullying environment, and some would say I learned these characteristics well. But how would my survival skills stack up in Jackson’s neighbourhood? Hmmm....

Talk about navigating the shoals of Scylla and Charybdis. Jackson learns the subtle art of selling dope as a high schooler and uses it to finance his education. But this lands him in jail and only fast talking saves him from losing his place in college.

Jackson is an athlete, as are many of his friends. But the bob and weave on a basketball court doesn’t prepare you for navigating your emotions, the anger you store up inside of you for the father who wasn’t there, for the other father figures who lied, who beat up your mom, who built a business as a pimp, and then tore it down with drug addiction.

Finding your feet in this community is harrowing to say the least and it seems Jackson struggles with it to this day.

I found this book terribly difficult to read. Much of the gangsta dialect simply defeats me.

But, what writing!
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
MylesKesten | 3 outras críticas | Jan 23, 2024 |
Telling of a black man's experience growing up in Portland, OR. important to read in many ways, but he spends a third of the book or so discussing his abuse and use of women and it made it challenging to respect and listen to the rest.
½
 
Assinalado
aezull | 3 outras críticas | Jun 14, 2021 |
this was intense. it's one of the hardest books i've read in a while. he asks a lot of his reader, and i tried to step up to the task but i'm not sure i didn't fall short at times. it's really hard to rate because of that and because of everything below.

this is tough in a few ways. the content is mostly really raw, and his language is very deliberately street language, which can be hard to follow. at intervals, though, the content and language are academic. he flows between the two styles in a way that makes it obvious that he is comfortable in both worlds, and it feels a little like he's poking the reader, wondering if we could pull off something like that, and as well as he can. (no, no i could not.)

that said, he writes really well and really engagingly (interestingly?) about hard topics. this was a hard read and a long, slow read, but at no time was i bored or frustrated or wanting to be done already. his style is impressive. his ability to live in both worlds, and make sense of both worlds, communicate life in both worlds - it's all on full display in this book.

for me, personally, i had the hardest time with his section that glorifies pimps. i think he would say that he was trying to represent how he saw them when he was younger, before he came to understand the harm they do to women and the community, and so he wasn't glorifying them. but it really didn't read like that, not all the time. maybe it's my own bias coming in or that i have a particular sensitivity to this topic (it's true, i do), but he still - to some extent - seemed to put these rapists and abusers on a pedestal, even while understanding their violence. (he did also seem to say that because they weren't - to his knowledge; but i have a hard time believing this - gorilla pimps, they weren't so bad. it's true that gorilla pimps are worse, but there's no excuse for trafficking in women and girls, full stop.) i tried really hard in this section (which was much longer than i was remotely comfortable with) to try to see his point of view and not jump to conclusions. but i can't get around there just being no excuse for violence like that, for hurting women and girls. abusers who abuse aren't given a pass because of their history and their childhoods. in no way do these men have it easy, but that isn't a reason to ruin these girls and women. and he glosses over the fact that for so many of these pimps, they're targeting and turning out girls in their own communities, continuing a cycle of violence in communities of color. when he did bring up statistics about trafficked women and girls, they weren't explained, and so actually read even more mild than the truth is. i do have compassion for these men and can see them, even, as victims. but that doesn't make it ok or excusable for them to become victimizers themselves. i can see, though, to some extent, that there is more gray and nuance than i may have understood years ago, when working with the girls and women who are traumatized by these men.

i wonder, too, about not living in portland and reading this. so much of it seems portland specific, but maybe you just skim over those parts if you don't know where he's talking about? he names things that you might not know (like streets or neighborhoods) if you didn't live here, and that seems like something that would be or maybe should be edited differently.

but for all of this - this is a powerful, thought provoking book.

when i moved to portland it was to near the area he talks about. i have a special affinity for north portland, although i never saw it the way it was when he grew up there. the bookstore he mentions as part of the gentrification of mississippi ave was my bookstore, although the change largely happened before i moved in. still, i don't know how to think about that; about how something that i loved and is wrapped up in all kinds of positive feelings for me personally can be associated with and pointed to as evidence of a new, white neighborhood.

there's a lot that i need to continue to process about this book.

and the last thing - this makes two books in a row for a particular book group where there are end notes in the book, but no notation in the text of the book itself to indicate to the reader that there are endnotes. is this a new trend? if so, i capital h hate this with a burning fiery passion that might even surpass my love of the oxford comma in force and magnitude.

"At the risk of sounding profane, America's civil religion is whiteness."
… (mais)
½
1 vote
Assinalado
overlycriticalelisa | 3 outras críticas | May 30, 2021 |
This book takes place in Portland, Oregon, during the 90's, and explores the crack cocaine epidemic, the African American community in Portland, and an intense, very sweet mother-son relationship. Jackson is an amazing writer, here was the paragraph that sold me on the book:

"You dump the cash in your bag, grab your keys, and hike outside to where your raggedy Honda is parked too far from the curb for you to have owned a license for as long as you have. There's a trick to starting the Honda, which you've learned after getting stranded beaucoup times: pumping the gas a few times but not so many it floods the engine."

This book is difficult at times, but totally worth it.
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
banjo123 | 4 outras críticas | Dec 26, 2020 |

Prémios

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Estatísticas

Obras
3
Also by
4
Membros
333
Popularidade
#71,381
Avaliação
4.2
Críticas
9
ISBN
18

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