When you think about it, slaves in the American South during the 19th century spoke a different language from their masters. Whites could sometimes barely understand them, and the reverse must have proven true at times as well. So novelist Percival Everett turns this insight on its head in James, his magnificent retelling of the Huckleberry Finn story. He writes from the perspective of Huck’s friend Jim. And in doing so he produces an indictment of slavery that reminds us how much of its legacy remains unaddressed in American society today.
In the opening, slaves secretly speak in standard English like college graduates among themselves. As James observes, “White folks watch us work and forget how long we’re left alone in our heads. . . If only they knew the danger in that.” Meanwhile, the Whites stumble along when they speak to slaves using words of one or two syllables studded with expressions adopted from slave argot.
Listen to James ruminating on a book by Voltaire he had secretly borrowed from Judge Thatcher’s library . . .
James reflects on slavery
“I had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance. 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.”
There’s more, a lot more, but you get the point. James’s command of the English language, and that of so many other slaves, is a running joke that glides smoothly into a much more serious story that soon becomes all too real. Then, Everett successively peels away the layers of pretense to lay bare the grim reality of daily life as a slave. The original novel is often described as a book for young adults. But James is nothing of the sort.
James by Percival Everett (2024) 320 pages ★★★★★
This is about us, too, a century and a half later
One thing stands out with perfect clarity after reading only a chapter or two. This book is fully as brilliant as the critics say it is. It’s a searing indictment of slavery, sans moralistic commentary . . . a celebration of America’s natural beauty . . . and a heartwarming picture of interracial relations when people can truly get past the racist legacy they inherit. Huck himself, and by all appearances a few others who appear in the book, simply ignore the difference in physical characteristics that might otherwise divide them.
For me, it’s also a reminder that I, as a White person, represent a small minority in a world that’s overwhelmingly Black, Brown, and Yellow—and getting more so all the time. We Whites constitute less than one in ten people worldwide, and we’d better get used to that.
About the author
Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has written 24 novels, four collections of short stories, and six collections of poetry. He has won literary prizes for much of his work, including an honorary doctorate and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Everett was born in 1956 in Georgia on a military base, father a sergeant in the US Army. He earned a bachelor of philosophy from the University of Miami and a master’s in fiction from Brown University. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their two children.
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