In Episode 112 of the Good Scribes Only Podcast, hosts Daniel Breyer and Jeremy Streich take on one of the boldest literary projects of 2024—James by Percival Everett, a genre-bending, perspective-shifting reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
By placing Jim—the enslaved man from Twain’s original—at the center of the narrative, Everett gives voice to a figure long relegated to the sidelines of American literature. The result is both a powerful commentary on race and storytelling, and a compelling, page-turning novel that asks what it really means to reclaim a narrative.
The novel tracks closely with Twain’s Huck Finn in its first third, reinterpreting key scenes from Jim’s point of view. But where Huck’s journey is often framed with youthful adventure and humor, James exposes the deadly stakes of Jim’s escape and the deeply racialized system he’s navigating.
Jeremy highlights the novel’s powerful twist on language:
“What blew me away was the code-switching. Jim speaks in that broken slave dialect around white people, but in his own head, he’s articulate, brilliant, quoting Voltaire.”
Dan agrees:
“It reframes the entire character. Everett shows how language was both a survival tactic and a revolutionary act.”
In James, reading becomes a radical act. Jim secretly teaches himself to read Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Voltaire. The podcast digs into how literacy becomes a metaphor for freedom—and how white ignorance often enables Jim’s subversion.
“There’s this amazing moment,” Dan says, “where he’s reading in secret, and he thinks, ‘This is my moment. Nobody can take this away from me.’”
Jeremy adds:
“Just the act of understanding written words becomes mystical. It’s private, it’s intimate, and in that world, it’s also dangerous.”
One of the most striking themes of James is the fluidity and performativity of identity. Jim, now James, begins to assert his full personhood by changing the way he speaks, thinks, and writes.
“With my pencil, I wrote myself into being,” Jeremy quotes from the novel.
The discussion explores how James transforms from property to person—not just in law, but in his own eyes.
In a bold narrative move, Everett reveals that Huck Finn is actually Jim’s biological son—passing as white and unaware of his true heritage. The twist forces a deep interrogation of race as a construct and further blurs the line between oppressor and oppressed.
“The whole book is about how arbitrary race is,” Dan explains. “Everett shows how it’s an invented system used to uphold power.”
In the final section, James flips the power dynamic. He returns to the plantation where his family is held, takes Judge Thatcher hostage, and liberates the enslaved people by setting fire to the fields.
“The ending was just badass,” Jeremy says. “It’s rare to get a story where the formerly enslaved gets justice—real justice.”
The novel closes with James, free in the North, being asked by a white man if he’s “the runaway slave Jim.”
“No,” he replies. “I am James.”
James is more than a retelling—it’s a rebuttal, a reclamation, and a respectful conversation with the past. It honors Mark Twain’s original while offering a deeper, richer understanding of a character whose voice was always there—just never fully heard.
“This isn’t about canceling Twain,” Dan notes. “It’s about continuing the conversation with the tools we have now.”
For a deep dive into James, race in literature, and Everett’s place in the American canon, check out Episode 112 of the Good Scribes Only Podcast.
