Goodreads Blurb

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars

“A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.” A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told through the eyes of the slave Jim with a twisted ending of karma and freedom. This quote sums up exactly how Jim felt about those who owned him and those who acted like slavery was not right but still imposed similar tactics. It’s a power story about Jim, who is a slave who decides to escape in order not to be sold and separated from his wife and daughter. He escapes along the Mississippi River, where he runs into Huck Finn, a white child who planned his death to escape his abusive father. These two characters create a strong bond of survival, respect, determination, and friendship. You will be shocked when you find out what bonds Huck and Jim at the end of the story.

Many parts of this story broke my heart, but one devastated me the most—the scene where the slave got beaten and eventually murdered for stealing a pencil. Jim was hiding when he had to watch an innocent person take a beating for suspecting they had taken a pencil. Jim asked for a pencil, and the slave got it for him, even though he knew the consequences of stealing something. A pencil is a powerful tool. One that Jim cherished because it allowed him to write his story. Reading and writing gave him power and freedom. Jim describes the safety he felt with the pencil in his pocket, even though he might have had a similar death if he had been found with the pencil. A simple object that was useless to most was the main reason someone had to pay dearly.

“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.” Jim fought to survive against every obstacle he encountered. Jim wasn’t like the other slaves. He was able to read and write. It was threatening to the Whites and even the slaves themselves. Throughout this story, you will see how shocked people were when Jim spoke out of character, something not allowed as a slave. For most of the story, he talks in the slave language they were expected to speak, and many times, he talks like a White person to Huck and Norman, a friend he made along the way who looked white but said he was a slave. Those interactions between Norman threw the Whites and the slaves off their rockers. The power the Whites had over the slaves was that they believed they were dumb and illiterate. Knowledge, reading, and writing are powerful. Not educating, beating them for stealing or escaping, and not doing what you asked encapsulated fear. Fear will make anyone submissive; don’t let anyone place fear in your soul. This story is a reminder of what slaves endured when humanity found slavery as a tool to make money and take control. Let’s not forget our terrible history so it doesn’t repeat itself.

Author Biography

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.