I’ve long admired Percival Everett’s ability to challenge narratives, particularly those surrounding Black identity and how our stories are told. 

I was first drawn to Everett through Erasure, a biting novel that skewers the publishing industry’s narrow expectations of African American literature. That book hit home for me as a writer and a Black man. I deeply understood the double consciousness that his protagonist, Monk, wrestled with. His having to navigate how he saw himself versus how the world saw him is something I’ve lived with my entire life.

So when I heard Everett was retelling Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective, I was intrigued.

Like many students, I was required to read Mark Twain’s novel in high school. Teachers praised it as progressive for its time, pointing to its anti-slavery message. But I could never get past the racism, the relentless use of the n-word, or the distorted caricature of Jim, his voice flattened into minstrel speech. Even as a teenager, it didn’t sit right with me.

Transforming Jim Into James

In James, Everett gives Jim his voice back. He is a man of deep thought, intellect, and quiet resistance. We learn that his exaggerated, broken speech is an act designed to survive the white gaze. 

Among fellow enslaved people, James speaks precise, elegant English. He reads philosophy in secret. He writes. He thinks. He sees the danger around him clearly and knows exactly what he must do to protect his family.

That theme of protection, specifically paternal protection, is key to the story. Late in the novel, James reveals that he is actually Huck’s biological father, the result of an affair between James and Huck’s mother. 

That twist completely reorients the story and deepens the emotional stakes. In addition to a tale of escape, their journey down the Mississippi becomes a quiet act of a father protecting his son without ever being able to claim him openly.

The fatherhood theme hit me on a personal level.

In 2008, I created my blog Mocha Dad to counter the damaging myth that Black fathers are absent, uninvolved, or emotionally unavailable. For years, that stereotype not only defined how society saw us, but also how we sometimes saw ourselves. I wanted to rewrite that story and show that Black men are nurturing, protective, and deeply committed to their children’s lives. James does that. It shows a Black father who will endure beatings, betrayals, and even take a life to reunite his family and secure their freedom.

James Reclaims Our Stories

Throughout the book, James explores the brutal systems that try to crush that love. Through a series of harrowing encounters, rape, murder, enslavement, and systemic dehumanization, we see how deeply entrenched racism shaped (and continues to shape) American life. Everett doesn’t shy away from violence or the cost of resistance. But neither does he reduce James to trauma alone. This is a story of strategy, wit, and unbreakable resolve.

The themes in James feel urgently relevant today. In a time where efforts to whitewash history are accelerating and books by Black authors are being banned, Everett’s novel feels like both resistance and revelation. It’s a reminder of the stories that have been silenced and the power we wield when we reclaim them.

James is Everett’s attempt to counter the American literary canon and prevent it from defining Blackness through a white lens. It’s a declaration that our stories, told in our voices, with our complexity, belong at the center, not the margins.

And for fathers like me, who are still rewriting the narrative of what Black fatherhood means, James feels like a mirror to our souls.

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