I said these kinds of things were adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures.
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Published 1884
So says Huck Finn during the raft journey down the Mississippi in a book that is generally acknowledged to be an American classic. He is talking about his companion, Big Jim, a runaway slave. The book has come under criticism in recent years and is not taught in some schools, largely due to the plentiful use of the n-word. But having just re-read Huck, that word is just one part of the problem: Jim is portrayed as stupid, slow, and largely dehumanized throughout the book, even though he puts himself in considerable danger to save Huck more than once.
The trip down the river is an adventure to Huck, but is literally a matter of life and death to Jim. Jim’s owner was planning to sell him down south, far from his wife and children, and so he is running away, hoping to get to a free state where he can work and eventually save enough money to buy freedom for his wife and children. The stakes are high: if Jim is captured, he will be flogged, tortured, and returned to his owner who will undoubtedly be even keener to sell him. If he is suspected of Huck’s ‘death’, he will be killed. Even the ‘free’ states are dangerous. No wonder he doesn’t want more ‘adventures’.
In James, Percival Everett tells the story from Jim’s point of view, deeply humanizing him and giving him agency. Everett’s novel is brilliant, subversive, moving, and pointed. In the first place, the slaves do not talk pidgin.
“White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” I said. “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior.’ So, let’s pause to review some of the basics. [Jim, giving a lesson to some black children]
[..] “You’re walking down the street and you see that Mrs Holiday’s kitchen is on fire. [..] How do you tell her?”
“Fire, fire”, January said.
“Direct. And that’s almost correct”, I said.
[..] Rachel said, “Lawdy, missum! Looky dere.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Why is that correct?”
Lizzie raised her hand. “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.”
“And why is that?”
February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.”
In this book, Jim can read and write, having had secret access to Judge Thatcher’s library, and he is an adult with a world of painful history behind him. Huck is (as in Twain’s book) a largely illiterate 13-year-old boy.
“How can a book feel good?” [Huck] grabbed the Rousseau and thumbed through it. “It ain’t even got pictures.”
[…] I really wanted to read. Though Huck was asleep, I could not chance his waking and discovering me with my face in an open book. Then I thought, How could he know that I was actually reading? I could simply claim to be staring dumbly at the letters and words.
Yet Jim can never let Huck become aware of his literacy and wisdom, despite the difference in age and experience. When decisions are to be made, Jim gently nudges Huck in the right direction; when Huck has a wild idea, Jim sometimes has to go along with it, always conscious that his life is precarious.
In both books, there is a growing friendship between the two, but in Huck Finn it is a little puzzling that Jim would risk his life for Huck. In James, there is a reason why Jim is so protective, and that reason becomes apparent over the course of the journey.
James largely follows the same course as Twain’s Huck, but at one point Jim and Huck are separated. Everett takes this opportunity to explore more of the social landscape of the time. Jim gets drafted (sold) into an all-white minstrel group that performs in blackface.
“Help me understand,” I said. “I’m to look authentically black, but I need the makeup.”
“Not exactly. You’re black, but they won’t let you into the auditorium if they know that, so you have to be white under the makeup so that you can look black to the audience.”
[..] Never had a situation felt so absurd, surreal and ridiculous. And I had spent my life as a slave. There we were, twelve of us […], ten white men in blackface, one black man passing for white and painted black, and me, a light-brown black man painted black in such a way as to appear like a white man trying to pass for black.
Twain’s Huck touches lightly on the slave experience, but James does not let the reader off so lightly: the realities of slavery are told in a way that is visceral but also deeply touching. The two con-men they meet are mostly treated as amusing and troublesome in Huck Finn, but are a real danger in James: they sell Jim to a sawmill where he has to labour with a blunt saw all day, cutting logs. His partner is a young girl, who has been sexually abused by the owner “since I was little.”
I hated that such violence had been served to my wife and would be served to my daughter.
One slave steals a pencil for James, so that he can tell his own story (a typically Everett-style circular reference), but is flogged to death for stealing. Later in the book, there is a rape while James is hiding; if he intervenes, he will die. Near the end there is the mention of “breeders”. Slavery is not glossed over.
James (and perhaps Everett?) is not a fan of organized religion.
If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.
No matter how knowledgeable and capable a slave may be, he is always lesser than any white person.
Even though Norman looked like the poorest and worst-off white man, he still commanded fear and respect.
As an author, Everett is un-categorizable: his books include novels about baseball, Vietnam veterans, medical quandaries, Greek myths, and dystopian futures. This diversity of style resulted in publishing problems, since he could not be pigeonholed by publishers as a black author writing about African-American issues (a situation he described beautifully in Erasure). It would be hard to imagine him sticking rigidly to Twain’s plot, and indeed in James, Jim’s dreams include conversations with John Locke (who invested in slavery and child labour while writing treatises about civilized society) and Voltaire (who was anti-slavery, but believed that ‘the African can be trained to be equal to the European’). These digressions are fascinating and thought-provoking.
I’m not generally a fan of retold tales, unless they add something distinctively original to the source, but this one needed to be written. It’s a brilliant book from a remarkable author.
Super review. I am dying to read the book now!
It is really fantastic, but I recommend reading Huck Finn as well (unless you already know it well)