Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a timeless classic for many reasons. Twain’s wit and humor surpass almost every other American author. His moral clarity about America’s enduring troubles about race still instruct today. For these reasons, it continues to be taught in American high school classrooms. However, the story is told from the perspective of Huck, a white person, someone with inborn privilege. What would the story look like when told from the perspective of the enslaved person in the story, Jim? Percival Everett imagines just that scenario as he retells this classic in the first person. He does so with flare, and his product gripped me until the very last pages.
This transformed account of Jim – also known as James – makes the story less about the dominant white society’s nagged conscious about racial injustice. Instead, Everett’s narrative becomes one of self-determination and self-actualization by granting Jim agency. Jim knows how to read and write. Curious about literature like Voltaire’s Candide, he becomes not only philosophical but also self-aware. He becomes the intelligent master of his own life in a society that couldn’t care less about people like him, despite the Civil War.
As a privileged white man, I draw personal courage from this tale of Everett’s Jim. Honestly, I lack the resourcefulness that Jim has throughout this account and admire his determination. I also learn to empathize with the adversity that many African Americans still tragically face. Twain’s storytelling might lie behind Everett’s plot, but the modern black experience also informs the verbiage. Particularly strong are Jim’s relatable sentiments towards his family, represented by countless letters of former enslaved persons seeking family members. With Everett’s recast, he becomes by far the most human actor in the book.
I’m not sure I’ll ever see this book taught in a high school classroom in my lifetime in my Tennessee home. Themes of racial justice and even revolution still threaten too many white interests. Nonetheless, this book should reach a broad audience, exemplified by its Pulitzer nomination. It conveys essential truths about how we humans still too easily exploit each other and about how people of any skin color don’t always fit our preconceptions. It creatively demonstrates how skin color can be one of the dumbest ways of categorizing a person’s social contribution. If you’re looking for something that’ll teach you about lingering racial injustice in a story format, this book might be written just for you!
James
By Percival Everett
Copyright (c) 2024
Doubleday
ISBN13 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Genre: Historical Fiction
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