His Name Is James*

Percival Everett’s James is the latest in a line of prominent novels by African Americans that features language and literacy struggles as central to character and plot. In Figures in Black, Professor Gates noted back in the 1980s that “the quest of the black speaking subject to find his or her voice has been a repeated topos of the black tradition, and perhaps has been its most central trope” (239). Thus, James joins a long list that includes Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Wright’s Native Son, Ellison’s Invisible Man, Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo and Flight to Canada, Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved, Walker’s The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, and Everett’s own Erasure.

In this retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim, as he’s called for part of the story, conducts language lessons in his cabin for children, including his daughter. He figures, “Safe movement through the world depends on mastery of language” (21). Although they are evolving as masters of Standardized English, they also learn to perform “dialect” when in the presence of whites so as not to disturb the comfort level of whites. Jim code-switches at the highest level. A covert visitor to Judge Thatcher’s library, he is familiar with the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Kierkegaard, and Annius of Viterbo, but he must hide his knowledge behind his “slave filter” (52).

When they are runaways on the Mississippi River, Jim and Huck have worthwhile conversations about identity, morality, justice, language, kinship, and freedom. But Huck generally wishes to be a more responsible Tom Sawyer. Jim wishes to be a man. After he finds paper and ink in a wrecked house and stashes them in his cave, he dips a stick in the ink and writes his first words: “I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name” (55). Reflecting on his words, he supposes, “If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning” (55). His next chance to write occurs when he is stranded in Illinois. Young George, who pays heavily for the act, steals a pencil for him. He starts his next piece, “My name is James. … With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.” In fact, his friend Albert already referred to him as James. However, writing the name means more. A fellow slave named Easter, also bilingual, reinforces the point:

“You can write.” It was not a question or an accusation, more a discovery, perhaps a call to duty.

                        “I can write,” I said.

                        “Then you had best write.”

“I will,” I said. (154)   

After a series of harrowing episodes and narrow escapes---they’re not “adventures” as Huck or Twain views them---James reflects, “I wrote to extend my thought, I wrote to catch up with my own story, wondering all the while if that was even possible” (280).

It is totally possible. James writes himself to there, meaning liberation for at least himself, his wife Sadie, daughter Lizzie, comrades Morris and Buck, and, in a sense, Huck as well. If he had been only Nigger Jim, he couldn’t have made it happen. In Iowa, a sheriff suspiciously questions his group, “Any of you named Nigger Jim?”

                        I pointed to each of us. “Sadie, Lizzie, Morris, Buck.”

                        “And who are you?”

                        “I am James.”

                        “James what?”

                        “Just James.” (303)        

 #thelanguagelane #keithgilyard #James #PercivalEverett

*This was written in early April but not posted because site renovation was in process.