Percival Everett

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. * From the "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily), Pulitzer Prize Finalist, and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

A Novel

James

Lindsay

Waiting is a big part of a slave's life. Waiting, and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands, waiting for food. Waiting for the ends of days. Waiting for the just and deserved Christian reward at the end of it all.

The only ones that suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say when they don't feel superior.

"Why did God set it up like this?" Rachel asked, "with them as masters and us as slaves?"

"There is no God, child. There's religion, but there's no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn't say anything about their punishment. But when we're around them, we believe in God. Oh lawdy lawd, we's bes believin'. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient."

"I'm sorry, Virgil, you might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it's not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel."

The children said together "and the better they feel, the safer we are."

How strange a world, how strange in existence that one's equal must argue for one's equality. That one's equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument. That one cannpt make that argument for oneself. That premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

How could he know that I was actually reading? I could simply claim to be staring dumbly at the letters and words, wondering what in the world they meant, how could he know? At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me: If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn't even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and therefore completely subversive. 

How am I supposed to know what 'good' is? Ways Ise sees it is this. If'n youse gots to have a rule to tells you what's good, if'n youse gots to have good 'splained to you, then you can't be good. If you need some kind of God that tells you right from wrong then you won't never know. But the law says good ain't got nothing to do with the law, law says I'm a slave.

"They had to know it was lies but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?"

"Folks be funny like that. They takes the lies they want and throws away the truths that scares them."

"You again," I said, "Have you come to continue your defense of condoning slavery?"

"Imagine it all as a state of war," Locke said. "You have been conquered, and so as long as the war continues you shall be a slave."

"Does it end? That's the question. Who gets to say that it's over? A war continues until the victor says it's over."

"If I'm in a war, then I have the right to fight back. That follows, doesn't it? I have a right, perhaps a duty, to kill my enemy."

It was clear that the people we'd escaped on the beach were not following us, they were too concerned with being survivors. 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.

Sadie Hoffman

What would they do to a slave who knew what a hypotenuse was, what irony meant, how retribution was spelled?

James quotes

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