A review by dkmorello
James by Percival Everett

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

A stirring and heart-felt take on Mark Twain’s stories, this time focusing on Jim, the runaway slave. Jim — or James, as he prefers — is a smart man who hides his deep intelligence behind the slave dialect white folks need to hear in order to understand slaves. He travels at night, along rivers, in mud and rain, meeting good and bad people, the bad people invariably white men who treat Jim like dirt and want to whip him, enslave him, sell him, kill him or lynch him. We get a new look at the relationship between Jim and Huck and on the “breeding farm” to which Jim’s wife and daughter were sold. Seeing big black men in chains at the farm, Jim asks, “Why do they have you chained up?” “They’re afraid of us,” the first man said, and then they all laughed. “We don’t know. I think they think it makes us feel more like animals. So we can mate like animals.” I felt for James and all the enslaved men and women in  US history and the racism that allowed people both then and now to treat fellow humans like animals. Town-wide book read in Greenwich, CT.
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