Percival Everett's “James” stands all on its own. You don’t have to read or reread Twain’s classic. The story pulled me in early on; it has so many interesting layers and the pacing is swift.
On page one we see pranksters Tom and Huck, playing Jim as the fool in their game. We smirk because we know…Jim is playing them, he’s performing.
Jim teaches his family that performing to meet white people’s expectations, like acting simpleminded, and using the expected slave dialect is a strategy for survival.
Oh, the irony. Language is used by the enslaved to deceive. Jim teaches the children their second language, the slave dialect. They are taught to use it whenever white people are in earshot. Or, as a warning signal to each other when white people are near.
When Jim learns that his owner plans to sell him to a man in New Orleans, Jim knows this would mean being separated from his wife and daughter forever. Jim runs, and plans to rescue and free them.
At the same time Huck’s abusive father Pap, is back in town. Huck fakes his own death and escapes. Huck and Jim run into each other and their journey along the Mississippi begins.
Jim and Huck’s relationship is complicated. Jim is protective, Huck thinks of Jim as a friend and elder and yet at times he treats him insensitively. Despite their camaraderie Jim still can’t trust Huck.
They meet con-men, slavers and most strangely, a minstrel group that hires Jim to be their tenor. Jim puts on blackface so white people think he’s white pretending to be black. The humiliation is too much. He runs.
And through it all Jim takes risks, he writes. He steals a slaver's notebook, and a child slave steals a pencil nub for him with disastrous results. Jim has agency even in captivity. And he decides, his name is James, just James.
This story stares you right in the eyes and confronts us with the poison of racism and our dark history. And Everett uses satire like a scalpel. At times I wish he would have been less precise, less obvious, making us work harder. At 326 pages I hope you will read this excellent novel once, I read it twice to experience the layers more deeply.
“James” can be found at our local libraries.
