James

Percival Everett 2024
Read: 2024
Fiction

My friend Jenn recommended this book to me and loaned me the hardback edition. While I have not read other books (yet) by the author, Percival Everett, I have seen American Fiction, a fantastic movie based on his book Erasure. This book is based on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, but this time, the story is told through the eyes of Jim, Huck’s runaway slave companion. This book has everything – adventure, the horrors of slavery, the abuses of slave owners and the casual racisim that condoned slavery, and the bonds of family being broken by slavery. But it also challenges assumptions made by people of that time and our time, and changes the narrative of the original story into one of hope and heroism. Like Erasure/American Fiction, Everett’s James fights against the stereotypes that people make of African Americans, and does so in an incredibly engaging way. I highly recommend this book!

You can purchase it on Amazon here.