First, Mark Twain wrote about a rascal of a white boy named Tom Sawyer, a trickster, in pre-Civil War Missouri. Then he wrote more about Huck Finn, a white boy who wanted to be a rascal but felt obligated to those who loved him and afraid of an abusive, alcoholic father. In Huck's story, we meet Jim, a runaway slave who goes down the river with Huck.
Who Jim really was is explored in Percival Everett's remarkable novel, James. The book gives James what he deserves, what every person deserves -- a life of their own, their souls reclaimed, and their voices heard.
The opening chapters of Everett's novel mirror Twain's story, expanding the reality of the daily lives of a slave and a white boy who looks up to him. Jim's owner, the Widow Watson, lets Judge Thatcher discipline her slaves. He is supposedly a kind example because he rarely whips them. James is gifted at showing how cruel the idea is without hyperbole. He, and his creator behind him, present the casual cruelty and injustices surrounding the lives of slaves.
The duality of their lives is represented by things such as slaves speaking better English than their white oppressors when they are among themselves. There are times in the novel when various whites notice or wonder about this, and it most often confuses them. This is a brilliant way to show the ways Black people are still seen in American society today, from the vicious racism of this in the Trump cult to the realities of the ways discrimination exists in such situations as housing and medical care.
Like most of the novel, the scene where Jim and other adults teach children how to speak when white people can hear is both funny and illuminating. There is a moment when the humor is replaced by simple truth, and it is one of the most illuminating moments in the book. Jim can read and write. With help, he is able to procure a pencil. What he records are words for all to take to heart and keep in their heads:
My name is James. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. My mother's mother was from someplace on the continent of Africa, I had been told or simply assumed. I cannot claim to any knowledge of that world or those people, whether my people were kings or beggars. ...
With my pencil, I wrote myself into being.
When Jim, who has run away, and Huck, who is pretending to be dead, end up on Jackson Island together, Huck continues to look up to Jim. And now that there aren't other eyes watching them, Jim slowly talks more like himself and becomes more of a mentor to the boy.
Throughout the novel, Huck ends up learning more from Jim than he ever would have thought possible. And while Jim is looking out for Huck, his wife and daughter are never far from his mind and heart. He has no idea how it will be possible, but he knows he will go back for them. and they will be together.
It's a heartbreaking moment when Huck realizes that, and tells Jim:
"I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don't think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them."
The novel has multiple examples of the way Black people are perceived as Other by white people. One incident takes place when Jim is bought by a minstrel show to sing as a white man in blackface pretending to be what he really is. What a white man does to Jim in not recognizing his basic humanity is shocking and illustrative of the way Black people are still often viewed.
Whether Jim is on his own, working for other masters and with other slaves, all show the reader the complexity of the society with slaves and the simplicity of its injustice. Jim is on his way to becoming James, to being his own man, not because he wasn't always his own man, but because America did not allow him to be such.
Although it is not up to Everett, or any other person of color, to educate white people, James is a novel that enlightens even as it engages the heart. It is entertaining, audacious and thoughtful, and one that was a gift to this white reader.
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