Karen’s Pick
December 2024
James
Percival Everrett
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, March 19,2024
James, written by Percival Everett,is a thought provoking and reimagined version of Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. This gripping novel is the brutal retelling of Jim’s marginalized voice in an unforgiving way. James is told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim, who in Twain’s version is the comic side-kick of Huck. This novel is not a children’s adventure story but a story based on an historical viewpoint of the pre-civil war time period.
Early in the novel the reader is made aware of James’s intellect and cunning survival skills. His ability to have mastered the art of “behaving” and using his “slave filter” to make himself sound incredibly uninformed to white tormentors is exemplified when James is teaching his technique to a group of enslaved children. He has taught these children to understand that, “the better they feel (white people),the safer we are”. James then asks them to translate that belief using slave talk, “da mo’better day feels, da mo’ safer we be” is their collective response.
James is a veracious reader who often has imagined conversations with philosophers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Locke about slavery. But being literate presents James with the question, “what would happen if it was realized that a slave knew what a hypotenuse was, or what irony means, or how retribution was spelled?”
As the story progresses, the reader does sense that James parallels the basic outline of Twain’s story. However similar this novel and the 1884 version may appear, James’s adventures with Huck or travels on the Mississippi could not be more different than the original. Everrett’s novel is fast- paced just like each of the adventures that James and Huck encounter.
Although hard to imagine what it might require for a runaway slave to stay alive, James describes one unforgettable adventure when forced to join a roving mistral band.
Never had situation felt so absurd, surreal and ridiculous. And I had spent my life as a slave. There we were, twelve of us marching down main street that separated the free side of town from the slave side, ten white men in blackface, one black man passing for white and a painted black, and me, a light-brown black man in such a way as to appear like a white man trying to pass for black.
I most highly recommend this 2024 winner of the National Book Award for Fiction . This was one of my all time favorite work of literary fiction. Be prepared to go emotional roller coaster ride but trust this reader, Percival Everrett’s James, is worth the risk!