#24 [2025/CBR 17TH] James by Percival Everett

CBR17Bingo - "Black" for the black cover

James (2024) by Percival Everett has been everywhere. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and I'd seen reviews and mentions of it all over the place. Barack Obama recommended it as well. So, it was only a matter of time before I got around to reading it. As most people know by now, James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain from the point of view of Jim. I'm pretty sure I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn many, many years ago, but I barely remember it. Thus, reading James felt like reading a new story. It would definitely be interesting to compare the two novels, but I do not have the memory for it.

Jim is a slave, surviving as best he can, when he hears that he is going to be separated from his wife and daughter and sold away from them in New Orleans. In desperation, he takes off to Jackson Island to hide and buy himself some time. He comes across Huck Finn, who faked his own death and is hiding on the island in order to get away from his violent father.

Huck Finn and James end up traveling down the river together, both of them fleeing from something. They try to avoid everyone as they survive storms, slavers, Huck's father, and others. For a time, James and Huck Finn are separated, and James is on his own. James meets some other Black people who are passing as white, he is re-sold as a slave, and is able to escape once again.

What really stuck out for me with this book was how high the stakes were for James. Everything was life or death, and everyone they ran into could put him in grave danger. It was very suspenseful reading. It also showed the desperation and brutality of slavery, and how hopeless it could be. ***SPOILERS*** In the end, we discover that James is actually Huck Finn's real father. I'm pretty sure this didn't happen in the original book, but it's both fascinating and believable in this version. 

Another theme of this book is that James has distinctly different ways of talking when he's around other slaves and/or Black people and when he's around white people. He slips occasionally with Huck Finn, who notices immediately, but it's usually a defensive mechanism to make white people feel at ease and less threatened. I am sure that this happened often within the context of slavery (and continues to happen today), although it's unlikely that it happened in exactly the way that Everett wrote it in this book. I'm not sure how James would learn to speak like a northern, educated liberal when he's a slave in the South, but James did have to hide his intelligence, understanding, and learning in order to protect himself. And he taught other slaves to protect themselves in a similar manner.

I thought this book was very well written and interesting to read. It would probably be even more interesting to compare this book with The Adventures of Huck Finn, but I think I will wait and maybe reread that one at another time. Recommended.