If you enjoyed reading Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn years ago and remember some of the situations that Huck got into, this reader recommends Percival Everett’s James, 2024 winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.
James is a retelling of Mark Twain’s classic story but with a new 21st Century take. Told from the point of view of Jim, the runaway slave, this well- fleshed out character thinks of himself as James with a reworked sense of himself and an identity different than that of the original. Merely identifying himself by that name signifies much: he regards himself as a valuable human being, not merely as property, and he has a voice. He will not let his master’s designation for him define him. The plot very much hinges on a grim world of racism, but Everett’s James is not the superstitious, simple slave Jim of Twain’s work.
When he learns that he is going to be sold and separated from his wife and daughter, Jim decides to run away and get enough money to be able to free Sadie and Lizzie. With a three hundred dollar bounty on his head, Jim happens to team up with Huck, a young white boy who has staged his own death to escape his violent, alcoholic father. The two take off on the Mississippi River to escape their circumstances. As in the original story, Huck and Jim follow many of Twain’s harrowing plot lines. But, this version of the slave is one of a self-taught educated Black man who has read philosophers such as John Locke and Voltaire in his master’s library. That he can subversively read, and a pencil is his most cherished possession that he touches for comfort through the fabric of his pocket separates him from the typical slave story. He understands that if he is caught reading or escaping his fate would be different than that of Huck’s.
Around white people, James always must assume a false identity. James knows how to “slave filter,” that is when he must hide behind slave dialect to conceal his education and intentions versus when he can use proper English. A pragmatic James maintains, “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them. The better they feel, the safer we are.” Throughout Huck and Jim’s adventures together, James is the brains behind their actions and he is protective of Huck. However, when the two are separated we see the sharp contrast between their experiences. In James’ interactions with tricksters who lie, slavers, and other slaves, the reader unfailingly is conscious of James’s fears and feelings of hopelessness as an enslaved man.
Within Everett’s poignant writing the reader reads a story about the inhumanity of slavery and the quest for freedom. While some of the professional reviews have credited the author’s use of humor, there isn’t much to laugh about while reading it. One exception is an ironic situation in which James is forced to appear in blackface in a minstrel show so that the audience perceives him as a white man with his face painted. As James shows, it is all about being what is expected of you but the need to be one’s true self is great.
James by Percival Everett is a dark, thought-provoking, insightful novel, one that will garner discussion at your next book group. This writer adds it to one of her favorite reads as of late.
