Jackson attempts to address this in “Men on the Scale”:
The syntactic turns and legions of digressions that serve the book so well in other essays are, in these two pieces, diversional, self-protective. Still, I would be remiss to gloss over criticisms of the book: Jackson is not the most reliable narrator in essays like “Men on the Scale” and “The Pose,” both of which try to explain how men rationalize (or make excuses for) their use and abuse of women. Survival Math is primarily interested in the ways social inequities shape Black men and legitimize a version of masculinity that is both behaviorally and attitudinally toxic. His “pile-ons” doggedly remind readers that Black American lives are inherently linked to our nation’s racist roots and to the racial and social injustices that continue to pervade contemporary society. Jackson piles letters, essays, poetry, and short biographical narratives each upon the next to overwhelming affect. In a March 2019 interview for The Paris Review, Annie DeWitt aptly describes Survival Math as “an urgent American odyssey that sweeps history, time, register, and place.” Hers is a dead-on characterization of a book tenaciously resistant to traditional characterizations of style or genre. Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family(Simon & Schuster) doubles down on Jackson’s unique style and digs deeper into the social, historical, and political contexts that shape the lives of many Black Americans.
Fans of The Residue Years’ multiple perspectives and frenzied cadence will not be disappointed his latest work. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and a Whiting Writer’s Award and established Jackson as a major new voice in contemporary American Literature. The novel, which explores the challenges of growing up Black in a neglected neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, during the 1990s crack epidemic, won both the Ernest J. Readers have been eager for a follow-up to Mitchell Jackson’s autobiographical novel The Residue Yearssince its 2014 release.
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