James by Percival Everett

Book Discussion of James by Percival Everett  

 

Fourteen of us met on Saturday Sept. 6th to discuss James by Percival Everett. This 2024 novel is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemmons), but instead of coming from the perspective of Huck Finn, this novel is written from the perspective of James. James is literate, clever, intelligent, caring, and loves his wife and daughter. What’s more, is that he has a strong sense of self. He’s confident in his personhood and has educated himself by reading the books in Judge Thatcher’s library.  

Where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and James describe the misadventures of Huck and Jim/James rowing down the Mississippi River and foraging and fishing for food, James is not a chronicle of boyhood adventures. The character James, in this book, is not boyish at all.  

Robin started us off by saying that a friend of hers didn’t like this novel. It seems that the reason had to do with the lack of dialect in this story. The original Huck Finn was written in 1885 and was filled with the character “______Jim” speaking in ignorant sounding dialect. Robin’s friend said that Mark Twain had spent countless hours perfecting this dialect for his book, and thought it was disrespectful for Percival Everett to not include it in his book. Robin did point out that she felt Everett paid homage to Clemmons’ work with the lessons on how to talk ‘slave language,’ such as,  

p.23 “The children said together, 

 ‘And the better they feel, the safer we are.’ 

‘February, translate that.’ 

‘Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.’ 

‘Nice.’” 

In the discussion, Cruz stated that she never read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This book, James, won the Barnes and Nobles Book of the Year in 2024. (James also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction, in addition to the the Stowe Prize for Literary Activism.)  

Cruz continued, “I like the fact that Percival Everett wrote the book and gave James a name. I like the revenge. Someone was killed because he had stolen a pencil. It infuriated me that Judge Thatcher questioned James’ speech.” 

Ann followed up with, “I was very impressed. James understood himself and others, which gave him the power to strategize. There was a huge amount of suffering and so many experiences of loss in the story.” 

Janice added, “I read James when it first came out. I was so excited when Percival Everett received an honorary degree at Wesleyan. I started to re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to refamiliarize myself with the story. The book James did great homage to the enslaved. I love seeing Huckleberry Finn from a different perspective.  

Maria remarked that she had “also read it previously for another book club. James is so smart. He was the problem solver in every situation. It’s truly an adventure book.” 

Bonnie said she also never read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “What I liked best is James’ view about religion.” 

p. 90 “I appreciated Voltaire’s notion of tolerance regarding religious difference, and I understood, as absorbed as I was, that I was not interested in the content of the work, but its structure, the movement of it, the calling out of logical fallacies. And so, after these books, the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.” 

Bonnie continued, “There’s something called the Jefferson Bible. Percival Everett wrote the introduction to one of the recent editions of the Jefferson Bible. “  

Yes, Percival Everett wrote an introduction for a 2004 paperback edition of The Jefferson Bible, published by Akashic Books.  Instead of a traditional foreword, Everett's introduction features an imagined conversation between himself and Thomas Jefferson. In this dialogue, Everett interrogates the contradictions between Jefferson's moral code and his personal actions, such as his ownership of slaves. 

 

Percival Everett photo from USC Today 

Kai, who had never attended one of these discussions and was basically sitting in to observe, shared, “I’m the only one here who didn’t read James. But I can say that my grandfather lived through slavery. He ended up graduating from the Tuskegee Institute. He was very intelligent, but he still had to wear ‘the mask’ (appearing subservient, not too bright,) in public. There are people today, having lived in Mississippi and Louisiana, who still put on that mask. I don’t know if Percival Everett ever lived in the rural south, yet he can relate to James/Jim.”  

As a matter of fact, Everett grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, definitely in the South, but perhaps not so rural.  

Iesha told us that she never read Huck Finn, and she hasn’t finished James in its entirety, but she responded, “I appreciate the author for giving us a portrait of someone enslaved as intelligent in text. Usually, the enslaved are portrayed as ignorant. As humans, we’re made to grow, to learn, to want more. He said to Miss Watson, “What would I be doing with a book?” Not only was he clever enough to educate himself in Judge Watson’s library, but he also knew enough to make the idea of him educating himself sound ridiculous.” 

Janice added, “Not only was he wise enough to say, ‘What would I be doing with a book?’ He taught the children to say whatever the white people wanted to hear. “  

Judy shared that she read Huck Finn first. “I remember how kind Jim and Huck were to each other. In James, I wondered how James became so smart as an enslaved person, but then I remembered that there were always smart enslaved people. There were three distinct petitions written by the enslaved as early as the 1700s.  

1. Belinda Sutton's petitions for reparations (1780s). Which she won. .  

2.A "Great Number of Blackes" petition for freedom (1774) Massachusetts  

3. The New Haven enslaved people's petition (1788) New Haven, CT  

The biggest difference between The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and James, besides the ending, is that in Huck Finn, we only got Huck’s perspective when Huck and James were apart from each other. In James, we get James’ perspective when he’s apart from Huck.  

Shelara went further, saying, “The enslaved people in this country didn’t begin in this country. Before their arrival here, they knew multiple languages. They knew how to grow rice and indigo. They knew all about ironworking. The reason we think the opposite is true is purposed. I guess this is why Percival Everett wrote this book. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim is a caricature. The enslaved had to live a double life.” 

Kai, agreeing with this, said. "My grandfather always said, ‘They didn’t see us.’ The implication is that you can rise higher right in front of them. There was an assumption in Black families that their children would go higher, even if that ambition had to be concealed.  

Shelara also added, “We have free public education in this country because after emancipation, the newly freed people wanted education. Laws were passed to educate the full community, for both Black and white people. “ 

Laura, referring to the lessons in ‘slave language,’ reminds her of ‘the talk,’ that African American parents give their children on how to speak and act around the police.  

Somehow, the group stumbled into the debate as to whether Huck was racist or not. Bonnie called our attention to p. 257, where James recognizes the bond between him and Huck. 

p.257 “I looked at the boy’s face and I could see that he had feelings for me and that was the root of his anger. He had always felt affection for me, if not actual love. He had always looked to me for protection, even when he thought he was trying to protect me.”  

Janice, considering that passage, said she didn’t think Huck was racist at all and he was always uncomfortable when they met strangers, and Huck would have to say, “James is my slave,” as opposed to “James is my friend.” 

Shelara, pushing back against this, said, “I think that many white people have that one Black person that they love, but that doesn’t mean they’re not racist.” 

Barbara M. remarked, “It was/is convenient for white people to see the enslaved as flat. They wouldn’t have been so easily able to oppress them if they saw the enslaved as complex humans.” 

Shelara reminded us that, “At the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim is freed, but Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn trick Jim, and don’t let him know that he is free.”  

Bonnie got right to the heart of the matter, saying, “If the enslavers were so gung-ho on white supremacy, why were they so concerned about keeping the enslaved from learning to read?” 

James answers this question by citing the power that reading gives, that power is magnified once the reader realizes that he has something to contribute to the written canon as well.  

Once James got hold of a pencil and paper, he wrote the following:  

p.55 “...But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning.”