Book Review: James by Percival Everett

We are lucky to have had the geniuses that have shaped our world. From Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci to Marie Curie to Einstein and beyond, each has made major contributions to the culture at large. And even more "everyday" smart people can make life easier for the rest of us.

But it would be absurd to think that all the geniuses we know of are all the geniuses that ever were. Chances are there were people even smarter than Einstein in this world, but who happened to be the wrong color, the wrong gender, the wrong religion, the wrong class, etc. and were ignored. Even today we struggle to recognize the humanity of, say, a person who struggles with English (not even thinking of the fact that they are speaking a second language). There are people who are automatically compartmentalized as not offering any useful thinking, and looked at as nothing more than manual labor.

Enter James by Percival Everett. James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But instead of following Huck, we follow Jim. Or, as he prefers (but is never asked by any white people), James.

In retelling an American classic, the story beats are well-known - James running away after finding out his family will be sold, James and Huck finding the house floating down the river, their run-in with "the Duke and the King", etc. But what sets this story apart is that while Jim seems along for the ride in Mark Twain's book, in James he is the one steering the events, constantly thinking through what the right actions would be.

James is fully aware of his status as a slave and what chains him to subhuman status. He's also fully aware of how bullcrap that status is and what an injustice he's living through. He knows this not only on a practical level, but also because he's an avid reader (while slaves are not allowed to read, he snuck into his master's library as often as possible) - he finds himself dreaming about debating philosophers like John Locke about the concept of chattel slavery.

One of the more controversial elements of James is speech. When speaking with white people present, James and the rest of the slaves are written as speaking like "Oh yes massa, I be's doin dat"; however, as soon as it is slaves only, they speak in a "normal" voice - even somewhat intellectual - that they only reserve for each other (knowing what it would mean if the white masters found out the slaves were actually capable of thinking). This can feel like a strange story element to swallow, but it really reinforces the fact that all of these slaves were fully human, fully capable of thinking, and potentially even Einstein-level intellects - but were beaten at the first sign of "insolence".

There are a couple of points that came up in the book that I thought were especially noteworthy. The first is that towards the end of the book, the Civil War breaks out. Some slaves that James meets along the trip ask him if that means he should be heading north towards "free states"; James, however, notes that no matter whether slavery is explicitly allowed or not, it's the same system in place across the country. This is a really good point to make - it's easy pickings to dunk on the southern states for fighting to keep slavery (even though some "northern" states had slavery as well), but even in "free" states black people were implicitly held down and shunted to lower classes (and unfortunately we haven't seen much improvement to this day).

The second noteworthy point is James questioning the reasoning behind why any white people would be abolitionists. As he points out, being an abolitionist could mean that the person cares about the welfare of black people...but it could also mean that the person just doesn't think white people should be doing something so abhorrent. This reminded me of a book on Reconstruction I had read, where it pointed out that while Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves (major asterisk there), upon his death he had no plans in place for what to do with all these now-free people, throwing into question how much he actually considered their plight (note: this isn't picking on Lincoln - he passed the tests he was given - but it's interesting to think of where he was coming from and what his next steps would have been).

James is interesting on the story level, but really fascinating on the subtextual level. Recommended - eight out of ten hot dogs.