A review by aksmith92
James by Percival Everett

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The Setup: James is a masterful and subversive retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, offering a fresh and profoundly resonant perspective on one of American literature's most famous characters. Through the eyes of Jim - now simply James - Everett reclaims the narrative, transforming Mark Twain's enslaved "sidekick" into a fully realized protagonist with intelligence, agency, and biting wit that challenges the racist assumptions of the original text.

Set in the antebellum South, the novel follows James as he escapes enslavement and navigates the dangers of a deeply unjust world alongside Huck Finn. However, where Twain's version presented Jim as a passive figure, Everett's James is sharp, perceptive, and painfully aware of the limitations forced upon him. The book is laced with irony and dark humor, exposing the preposterousness of slavery and the hypocrisy of those who perpetuate it. James's internal monologue provides a scathing critique of the white world around him, offering moments of both poignant reflection and some satire.

What I Loved: This book deeply moved me. Everett's prose wasn't fluffy, and sometimes it was even choppy and razor-sharp, yet somehow it was beyond elegant. The novel was incredibly readable yet had an essential bite to it. While it was fast, you also had the chance to read between the lines, enabling analytical thought of US history. Everett blended historical authenticity with contemporary insight and didn't just reimagine Twain's work but interrogated it, forcing readers to confront how literature has historically silenced or misrepresented Black voices. James was engaging and full of adventure, tension, and moments of unexpected levity. Yet, Everett never let you lose sight of what this novel was about: the atrocity AND absurdity of slavery in America. On top of that, the underlying drive for James was to save his family, and that story was never lost in this book, which made me love it even more.

In addition, there was also incredible realism here—Everett helped you feel part of the story. You were right next to James, watching him run for his life and interacting with despicable people, including those who thought they were doing good but were just as much part of the problem. You felt the sadness when James interacted with slaves who were experiencing Stockholm Syndrome. You were seeped with the feeling of complication for some other characters trying to survive. This made me uncomfortable, as it should.

Truly, this was a brilliant deconstruction of an American classic. It's a necessary and powerful novel that speaks to both the past and the present. It is a must-read for fans of literary revisionism, historical fiction, and stories that give long-overlooked characters the voice they deserve. However, I recommend it for literally everyone. Students should also read this in tandem with reading Huck Finn in high school. This will no doubt become an essential and poignant classic.

I don't have any critiques because I loved it that much. It was painful to read, no doubt. There was intense violence - physical and emotional - in this book, but that cannot stop, and most certainly should not stop, people from reading it. 

I was worried this wouldn't live up to the hype it keeps getting, but my-oh-my, it sure did. Go read this!

"What if they don't understand?" Lizzie asked. "That's okay. Let them work to understand you. Mumble sometimes so they can have the satisfaction of telling you not to mumble. They enjoy the correction and thinking you're stupid. Remember, the more they choose to not want to listen, the more we can say to one another around them." 

"Ain't people a part of nature?" "If'n dey is, den dey ain't no good part. Da rest o' nature don' hardly talk to no human peoples anymo. Maybe it try from time to time, but peoples don' listen."

How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one's equal must argue for one's equality, the one's equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

"Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?" "Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares 'em."

"It's a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements" Easter laughed. 

It was clear that the people we escaped on the beach were not following us; they were too concerned with being survivors. White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

If one knows hell as home, then is returning to hell a homecoming? Even in hell, were there such a place, one would know where the fires were just a little cooler, where the rocks were just a little less jagged. And so it was in my hell. 
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