Percival Everett
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Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books. His novel Erasure was adapted into the major film American Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and two sons..
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Discussion Questions
- James is a retelling of Mark Twain’s 1885 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is widely regarded as a classic work of American literature. Have you read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before? How does Everett subvert Twain’s original text? Did this reimagination change your perspective on the original novel?
- Twain is well-known for his satirical writing. Where does Everett use humor and satire in James? What social and cultural conditions does the novel’s satire mock or critique?
- Reflect on Jim’s narration. Why does he switch between vernacular and standardized English? How did this code-switching affect your reading experience?
- Describe Huck’s role in the story. How does Jim’s fugitive status, as well as race, color, class, age, and education, influence the relationship between the two characters?
- James depicts the brutalities of slavery, particularly the violence inflicted upon enslaved women and girls, through the stories of Sadie, Lizzie, Sammy, and Katie. What are the unique threats that these characters must navigate? How does Jim react to the gendered violence that he encounters?
- Return to Jim’s travels with the minstrel group. What does the novel say about the performance of race? How do blackface minstrelsy and racial passing complicate or undermine racial classification? Can all the characters be seen as performers of race?
- Jim’s quest for freedom parallels his quest for literacy. Discuss the key moments on his journey to writing his story. What are the texts that he studies? Who are the characters who give him the tools and encouragement to write?
- James references author William Wells Browning, composer Daniel Decatur Emmett, and philosophers John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. Consider researching these figures. How do they influence your understanding of the historical period?
- Discuss the use of religion and superstition in the story.
- Were you surprised by Jim’s revelation in chapter one of part three? Returning to earlier passages, can you identify any moments of foreshadowing from Everett? How would you characterize Huck’s reaction? Have you ever learned something shocking about your family’s history?
- James features an ensemble of fugitive and enslaved characters. How does Everett affirm the humanity of these characters in his writing? Was there one who was particularly memorable to you?
- The Mississippi River is central to the landscape of the novel. What is the role of the river? How did it shape the political landscape of the region and the events of the novel?
- Reflect on the title, James. What’s the significance of Jim renaming himself? Why do you think Everett chose to title the novel in this way?
- What was your reaction to the novel’s ending? What do you think the future holds for James and his family?
- After reading James, can you think of another character from a classic text that you would like to read as the narrator of their own story?
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James by ISBN: 9780385550369Publication Date: 2024-03-19When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
Read A-Likes
Beloved by ISBN: 9781400033416Publication Date: 2004-06-08Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
The Sellout by ISBN: 9781250083258Publication Date: 2016-03-01Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens--on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles--the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident--the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins--he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.
Demon Copperhead by ISBN: 9780063267466Publication Date: 2022-10-18Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
