“This is more than Mitchell S. Jackson’s story, and as he traces his great-grandparents’ exodus from Alabama to Portland and the subsequent lives of his relatives…he captures the cyclical nature of poverty and neglect…The prose is a stunning mix of internal monologue and historical and religious references that he incorporates to tell his story…Thanks to Jackson’s fresh voice, this powerful autobiography shines an important light on the generational problems of America’s oft-forgotten urban communities.”—Publishers Weekly, starred
"Survival Math chronicles the history of our country from the vantage point of Northeast Portland, but this ain’t Portlandia. This is as real as it gets, and there’s more love stories—more romantic love, more mother to son love, more brother to brother love-- than any book should be able to hold, and yet Jackson has figured out the equation to solve for the X on which our lives depend.”
—A. Van Jordan, award-winning author of The Cineaste
“[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.”—Boston Globe