50
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Featured Preorders
    • Award Winners
    • Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • 50 Books for 50 Years
    • 25 Best 21st Century Sci-Fi & Fantasy
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Journals and Notebooks
    • socks
    • Games
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store

Don't Miss

  • Powell's Essential List: 25 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
  • Powell's Author Events
  • Oregon Battle of the Books
  • Audio Books

Visit Our Stores


Keith Mosman: Powell's Picks Spotlight: Sidik Fofana's 'Stories from The Tenants Downstairs' (0 comment)
I was a theatre major, and like most theatre majors, I: 1. Insist on spelling “theatre” with an “re” and 2. Don’t actually make theatre any more (and even seeing any plays in performance during the last few years has been a challenge for well-documented, world-historical reasons)...
Read More»
  • Kelsey Ford: Women Translating Women: 8 Translators to Read for Women in Translation Month (0 comment)
  • Michelle Carroll: What We're Watching: The Threequel (0 comment)
  • Michelle Carroll: What We're Watching: The Threequel (0 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family

by Mitchell Jackson
Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9781501131738
ISBN10: 1501131737
Condition: Like New


All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$9.98
List Price:$17.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
7Burnside
7Cedar Hills
2Hawthorne
20Local Warehouse

From Powells.com

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.


Staff Pick

Survival Math is a brilliant memoir told in a unique and powerful voice. Jackson explores his family history, the history of Portland, and the larger issues that surrounded his childhood. “Survival math” refers to the hard economic choices he and his family made in one the whitest cities in America. Jackson’s eloquent and mesmerizing prose makes this a standout read. Recommended By Mary Jo S., Powells.com

Combining scholarship and personal history, and writing with his uniquely brilliant voice, Mitchell Jackson takes on the struggles, consequences, and even responsibilities that spring from growing up with the inherited burden of poverty and marginalization. Survival Math is a gorgeously crafted memoir and, in its wider scope, a downright important book. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

"A vibrant memoir of race, violence, family, and manhood...a virtuosic wail of a book" (The Boston Globe), Survival Math calculates how award-winning author Mitchell S. Jackson survived the Portland, Oregon, of his youth.

This "spellbinding" (NPR) book explores gangs and guns, near-death experiences, sex work, masculinity, composite fathers, the concept of "hustle," and the destructive power of addiction — all framed within the story of Mitchell Jackson, his family, and his community. Lauded for its breathtaking pace, its tender portrayals, its stark candor, and its luminous style, Survival Math reveals on every page the searching intellect and originality of its author. The primary narrative, focused on understanding the antecedents of Jackson's family's experience, is complemented by survivor files, which feature photographs and riveting short narratives of several of Jackson's male relatives.

"A vulnerable, sobering look at Jackson's life and beyond, in all its tragedies, burdens, and faults" (San Francisco Chronicle), the sum of Survival Math's parts is a highly original whole, one that reflects on the exigencies — over generations — that have shaped the lives of so many disenfranchised Americans. "Both poetic and brutally honest" (Salon), Mitchell S. Jackson's nonfiction debut is as essential as it is beautiful, as real as it is artful, a singular achievement, not to be missed.

Review

"Relentlessly clear-eyed and virtuosic, Survival Math offers revelation after revelation; in the end, it remakes our understanding of the world and those in it." Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing

Review

"This is a mesmerizing book, full of story, truth, pain, lyricism, humor, and astonishment: the stuff of a difficult life, fully lived, and masterfully transformed into art." Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and The Golden House

Review

"This story is grit and gilded; a space where individual pasts collide with our collective hopes for America's future." Damaris B. Hill, author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing

Review

"Mitchell Jackson's Survival Math is riveted by his exacting and tender calculus of each subject's depth and humanity. Each hustle, dodge and scramble we witness in these pages is anchored in the turbulent sea of American history." Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olio

About the Author

Mitchell S. Jackson's debut novel won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His honors include a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, TED, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN, NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts), and the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and elsewhere. The author of Survival Math, he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

5 1

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 5 (1 comments)

`
Alan Scott , November 09, 2021 (view all comments by Alan Scott)
I recommend this moving and engaging read. Mitchell S. Jackson explores racism, gentrification, substance abuse, masculinity and fatherhood through the lens of his life experiences growing up in Portland, Oregon. The author slips seamlessly from raw, personal introspection in the vernacular of the streets he grew up on, to astute historic and cultural investigations in the lexicon of the literary and academic world he now inhabits. He tells a universal story of the will to survive and the unique means and methods we each embrace to achieve this within the culture and context we inhabit. I will not adopt a privileged conceit that the book allowed me to walk a mile in the author’s shoes, but perhaps it let me slip them on, feel the places where they pinch, and imagine the blisters and calluses he experiences as he walks through life.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment




Product Details

ISBN:
9781501131738
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
02/04/2020
Publisher:
Scribner Book Company
Language:
English
Pages:
336
Author:
Mitchell Jackson

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$9.98
List Price:$17.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
7Burnside
7Cedar Hills
2Hawthorne
20Local Warehouse

More copies of this ISBN

  • New, Trade Paperback, $17.00
  • Used, Trade Paperback, Starting from $11.50

This title in other editions

  • New, Hardcover, $26.00
  • Used, Hardcover, Starting from $10.98
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2022 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##