If I Survive You and the Philadelphia 76ers
If I Survive You By: Jonathan Escoffery
Published: September 6, 2022 Date Finished: January 14, 2024
Rating: 9/10
If I Survive You is a collection of 8 stories detailing the lives of a family that fled Jamaica for the United States in the 1970s because of the excessive violence. The book centers around Trelawny, the younger American-born son of Topper and Sonya. Trelawny struggles with his identity in Miami. He constantly asks his family “What am I?” and doesn’t seem to fit in with any group at his school. He goes through his whole life struggling to reconcile his Jamaican heritage with his American lived experience.
The stories detail the whole family’s struggles with racism, recession, marital strife, and Hurricane Andrew. Topper fathers a child out of wedlock with a woman back in Jamaica and Sonya ends their relationship. She makes him take responsibility for one of their two boys and leave her life entirely. Topper favors Delano to an extraordinary degree. Delano follows Topper into the landscaping business and is more conventionally masculine in a way that Topper expects his sons to be. Topper views Trelawny as “defective” even saying so in one of the stories that leads to a massive rift in their relationship. There is, naturally, massive sibling rivalry between Trelawny and his elder brother Delano.
Trelawny briefly escapes Miami to attend college in the Midwest where he studies English. Unlike in Miami, he is unambiguously identified as Black, but that comes with its own drawbacks. He graduates in the heart of the recession that resulted from the 2008 financial crisis and struggles to provide for himself after graduation. He lives in his car for a time and reduces himself to things like punching a woman for a photo project and exploiting elderly tenants in a low-income housing establishment to make ends meet. It’s a grim story of survival beautifully told by the author.
Escoffery uses second-person narration effectively in many of the stories. The second story told from Topper’s point of view also makes use of Jamaican Patois. Despite the heavy themes and bleak outlook of the book, Escoffery utilizes effective humor throughout the work. It’s a great debut work from an author I’ll be keeping an eye on in the future.
Philadelphia 76ers (vs Denver Nuggets) -4 -110 at FanDuel
YTD 2-1-0 and +0.95 units
The Denver Nuggets cruised through the playoffs last season to the franchise’s first-ever NBA Championship. The team lost Bruce Brown to free agency, but otherwise returns largely intact from that triumph. They have picked up right where they left off and currently sit in third place in the Western Conference with a 28-13 record. They remain the second favorite in the betting odds to win this year’s finals behind the Boston Celtics and Nikola Jokic is the odds on favorite to claim his third career league MVP award. Despite this, I’m picking against them in the first game of Tuesday’s tasty TNT NBA doubleheader against the Philadelphia 76ers.
The biggest reason (literally) I’m confident the 76ers will prevail at home is the man in the middle Joel Embiid. The big man has been dealing with some injuries of late, but when he has been on the court, he’s been undeniable. Embiid is averaging nearly 35 points per game to go along with over 11 rebounds and almost 6 assists. He also seems to relish playing against Jokic and other superstar centers. He’ll have his hands full trying to guard the Serbian, but Jokic will have an even greater difficulty dealing with Joel.
The 76ers showed that addition by subtraction is possible in the NBA. They moved mercurial point guard James Harden to the LA Clippers. Without the encumbrance of another ball-dominant backcourt player, Tyrese Maxey has shown he’s one of the best guards in the NBA. I’d go so far as to say Maxey is the third-best player in this game and could be the X-factor in the matchup. Last year, Bruce Brown may have drawn the assignment to try to guard him, but this year it probably falls to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Maxey can score on anyone and has shown increased playmaking ability this season. The Maxey-Embiid pick and roll is one of the top offensive actions in the league this year.
The 76ers are coming off a back-to-back but have been relatively healthy. The Nuggets list many of their starters on the injury report as game time decisions. Both should be eager to show they are championship contenders in this national TV matchup of two top contenders. It should be a great game, but I’m taking Philadelphia to pull out a win.