If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

This critical volume provides sweeping testimony from survivors of just a fraction of U.S. school shootings, beginning in 2018 and working back chronologically to the University of Texas at Austin shooting in 1966, recognized as the first mass school shooting in the nation. Each of 21 chapters highlights a different tragedy, and at the start of each chapter, the names and ages of those killed are given recognition on their own page.

Amye Archer and Loren Kleinman, editors of If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings, have provided survivors the space to tell their stories, mostly in narrative form. There are also several interviews and numerous photographs in this 494-page book. Below is a link to an excellent review, which appeared at the Brevity Blog on December 17, 2019; it was written by Sarah Chaves.

“A Review of Amye Archer and Loren Kleinman’s If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings.”

Archer and Kleinman have done heroic work in the preservation of survivors’ stories not just in this book, but also in the creation of a website that features even more voices/stories and resources for teachers. This digital archive and book capture the grief, trauma, and long-lasting physical and emotional effects of gun violence in schools in the U.S. Of course it is hard to sit with these narratives. But listening to them, writing them down, saying the names of the victims out loud — these are necessary acts of remembrance, necessary acts of collective resolve in the gun safety movement.

“The result is an important and horrifyingly thick anthology of mass murders…Highly difficult to read in one sitting, but we must not look away.” —Kirkus Reviews