If I Survive You

There are three hurricanes depicted in If I Survive You: Andrew, Gilbert, and Irene. Each of the hurricanes in some way speaks to the theme of Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. The storms are interwoven into moments of heightened familial tension, providing visual imagery that embodies that tension: the meteorological storms represent Trelawny’s family’s “stormy” dynamics. Andrew, the largest hurricane to have hit South Florida in recent memory, strikes at a time when Topper and Sanya’s marriage is breaking under the weight of Topper’s drinking, philandering, and disappearances from the family home. Andrew, which almost entirely destroys Trelawny’s family home, is thus symbolic of how Topper’s behavior destroys the family itself. When Topper returns to the family home to rebuild it, he takes Delano and leaves Trelawny with his mother. Trelawny’s exclusion from the construction process is also emblematic of how Topper and Delano will exclude him from the nuclear family unit, which they will rebuild together, as a pair. Gilbert strikes Jamaica, which prompts Topper to travel back to his homeland. While there, partially out of homesickness, he begins an affair with a former girlfriend that results in the birth of a child and his divorce from Sanya. Irene hits Miami during the breakdown of Delano’s marriage, and the scenes of the storm and its aftermath are interwoven with fraught conversations between Delano and his estranged wife. In a moment of action that recalls his own father’s difficulty maintaining a healthy marriage, Delano too struggles to provide his wife the kind of life that she had envisioned. Each man’s stormy set of difficulties wreaks havoc upon their families.

The ackee tree is symbolic of both Jamaican cultural identity and Trelawny’s difficult family situation and speaks to the themes of Immigration and Cultural Identity as well as Immigration and Fraught Family Dynamics. The ackee tree, which is native to Jamaica, produces a fruit that is toxic in its raw form and must be eaten cooked. Because of the dangers of eating it raw, it is heavily regulated in the United States and can be difficult to obtain. For Trelawny’s father, difficulty has marked his immigration experience. Topper struggles not only to find economic stability in his new home country, but also to maintain a connection to his Jamaican cultural identity. The opportunity to grow an ackee tree in his backyard, given to him by a son whom he favors because he is “more Jamaican” than his younger brother, is something Topper greatly values. Preparing and eating ackee fruit is a way for him to engage in the kind of cultural practices from which he has always derived self-understanding, and it is also important to him to share this cultural food with his children. That Delano enjoys the ackee while Trelawny finds its unappetizing flavor reminiscent of “scrambled eggs” (a common complaint from non-Jamaicans) is representative of the cultural divide between Trelawny and his older brother and father. In short, it captures how Topper and Delano share a “Jamaican-ness” that Trelawny, born and raised entirely in the United States, lacks. That Trelawny attacks the ackee tree with an axe is emblematic of the anger that he feels toward his father and brother for what he perceives as their exclusionary behavior: To them, Trelawny does not quite belong in the family unit.