Review: James

James by Percival Everett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a while since I read Huck Finn in high school - about the only Mark Twain I've actually read, as a matter of fact. But this reimagining from the point of view of James, the enslaved Black man whom Twain had Huck only know as Jim, very much stands on its own. I've still not yet read much of Percival Everett's work besides Erasure - the source material for American Fiction - but this seems like a perfect addition to Everett's bibliography, expertly challenging preconceived notions about Black people. 

Though Twain, as well intentioned as he was in satirizing slavery from a few decades' distance at the time, didn't give Jim a great deal of character depth, Everett acquits himself with aplomb doing his job, highlighting James's family life and filling in gaps in his story. My favorite aspects, personally, were the scenes where James makes it clear to the reader that he's very well educated, but still puts on a typical "slave" dialect because it's what white people expect to hear from him - code switching is a pretty old phenomenon, no? - and similarly, that fever dream where James talks to a vision of Voltaire who acts like he's so above it all when it comes to bigotry, but isn't really - and yet, that didn't stop Candide from being quite influential on James in his journey. 

I imagine much of Everett's other work is just as varied in style and tone as this book compared to Erasure, but his sharp sense of satire is what makes me want to start picking up more of his books that I've been missing.

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