Our guest is Mitchell S. Jackson, whose new book is an autobiographical collection of essays called "Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family." As was noted by The Boston Globe, it's a "vibrant memoir of race, violence, family, and manhood.... Jackson recognizes there is too much for one conventional form, and his various storytelling methods imbue the book with an unpredictable dexterity. It is sharp and unshrinking in depictions of his life, his relatives (blood kin and otherwise), and his Pacific Northwest hometown, which serves as both inescapable character and villain.... It's Jackson's history, but it's also a microcosm of too many black men struggling both against their worst instincts, and a society that often leaves them with too few alternatives.... His virtuosic wail of a book reminds us that for a black person in America, it can never be that easy."
"Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family"
