Becky's Great Book Reviews James by Percival Everett

James by Percival Everett is a retelling of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn story, but through the eyes of Jim, a black slave. Riveting, harrowing and powerful, this is a story that every American should read.

When Jim finds out he is going to get sold, he realizes he will be separated from his wife and daughter and might not ever see them again. Understanding that his best bet would be to leave Hannibal, Missouri, and come back later to free his family, Jim hides out on an island on the Mississippi river until he can make an escape plan. There he encounters young Huck who has also run away, staging his own death so that his abusive father doesn't come after him. Jim realizes that Huck's death will be blamed on him, the runaway slave, and that now the hunt for him will be elevated.

Jim and Huck set out on the mighty river, using a raft and a stolen canoe. The two encounter scam artists, crooks, and despicable people with no regard for Jim as a human being. Hateful characters inflict suffering upon Jim through whippings, beatings, and humiliations. Jim eventually gets separated from Huck and while he runs for his life, the timeline heads into the beginning of the civil war. One wouldn't necessarily expect humor in a story like this but Percival Everett writes with a comedic flair that's just the right tone.

In the novel, Jim and other slaves have adjusted their diction around white people to fit the whites' narrative (lord becomes lawdy, etc). This facade has allowed them to adopt a kind of camouflage. As Jim instructs his daughter and other children on how to speak "correct incorrect grammar", in an earlier passage he tell them, "White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don't disappoint them. The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us". In reality, Jim can read and write and has the mind of a scholar.

As Jim and Huck continue as fugitives together, Jim is exhausted by having to stay in character. Percival Everett uses this to masterful effect later in the novel when Jim gratifyingly reveals his high intelligence not only to Huck, but to others as well. What irony that Jim's intelligence is scarier to the slave owners than anything else.

Early in the novel Huck asks Jim what he would pick as his name if he wasn't assigned one by his overseers and Jim tells him he would pick James. This subtle renaming of himself is Jim's taking back control of his own destiny and sets the stage for the taking back of his life and humanity from the hell of slavery.

This character's survival and the justice he eventually achieves after years of pain and repressed justifiable rage is one of the most triumphant feelings ever evoked from a piece of literature for this reader. I thank my brother, Joe Coulombe, author of Mark Twain and the American West, (and expert on all things Mark Twain!) for recommending this novel. I give James by Percival Everett a resounding five stars out of five.