James by Percival EverettMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hooter: “Lawdy, freedom ain’t jest chains off; it be chains out da head.”
James by Percival Everett is a sharp, harrowing reimagining of Huckleberry Finn told from Jim’s point of view. Early on, we see him hiding on Jackson Island after learning Miss Watson plans to sell him, meeting Huck there and turning the familiar river journey into a desperate attempt to stay alive and someday reclaim his family.
Everett’s standout move is in the language: James uses a “slave filter,” speaking caricatured dialect to white people (“Who dat dere in da dark lak dat?”) while coaching children like Lizzie in “correct incorrect grammar” for Miss Watson—“dat be” instead of “dat is”—in secret lessons back in their cabin. In private, he debates Voltaire in a fever dream and discusses ideas like “proleptic irony,” making it clear that the broken English is a performance, not a limitation.
Where the book turns divisive is in its final act, when James’s anger fully erupts: he kills a sadistic overseer, forces Judge Thatcher at gunpoint to reveal where his wife and daughter have been sold, and helps incite a violent mass escape from a slave‑breeding plantation before finally naming himself “James” in Iowa.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment