Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MSNBC Daily.
“James,” novelist Percival Everett’s retelling of “Huckleberry Finn,” which published Tuesday, not only makes the runaway the narrator, but it imagines him as a kind of Frederick Douglass: that is, possessed of a capacious mind, a mastery of language, a willingness to fight and a reckless burning to write his own story. James is not the Jim from Mark Twain’s late 19th century masterpiece. As forward-thinking and imaginative as Twain was, not even he could have conceived of a James.
The people being systematically exploited, the people being chained, the people being whipped, the people being raped. His decision is not unlike, say, putting the plight of enslaved Africans in the center of the story of America. In a March 9 MSNBC column, professor Koritha Mitchell pointed out how important it was to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs that they be credited for having written the story of their lives.
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Percival Everett’s sly take on ‘Huck Finn’ upends Mark Twain’s worldIn “James,” the author who inspired “American Fiction” tells a familiar story from a fresh perspective.
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The Curmudgeon: Huck’s Jim Gets a Chance to Speak for Himself In JamesPercival Everett provides a new path into Adventures of Huck Finn and addresses its problems head-on in his new novel, James.
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10 books to add to your reading list in MarchBooks to read in March include 'James' by Percival Everett, 'Wandering Stars' by Tommy Orange and 'Age of Revolutions' by Fareed Zakaria.
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Everett afterschool teacher arrested: Inappropriate relationship with student allegedThe afterschool program is run by Mission Graduates as a Beacon Center, which also operates four other extended day programs in San Francisco.
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‘They’d be screwed’: Businesses could be displaced as Everett considers options to save AquaSoxThe team’s field must be updated to align with Major League Baseball’s standards in order to keep the AquaSox in Everett.
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Man accused of rape, sodomy at Everett Middle SchoolJeremy Reyes, 20, was booked into jail on Tuesday with eight charges, including statutory rape and sodomy of a minor.
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