James has been haunting me for months. Every time I walked into a bookstore, this book was always there with bright orange cover, covered in prize stickers and handwritten notes by the bookstore staff praising it, daring me to pick it up. I did what I sometimes do before picking books to read: searched for the quotes on Goodreads. And the quotes resonated with me so deeply that I finally gave in. And I’m glad I did.

The story follows James, an enslaved man escaping his owner. Behind the escape story, this is also a book about the power of reading, of writing, of language as part of the rebellion. James reads. He writes. And in a world built to keep him silent and uneducated, language becomes part of his weapon. A kind of power that cannot be chained.

It’s not an easy story to read. After all, it’s a story about slavery. Terrible things happen to good people, simply because of the color of their skin. There are cruel characters who exploit and degrade James simply because they can. There is murder. There is violence. And yet, there is beauty in thought, in imagination, in the revolution of words.

One scene that refuses to leave my mind is when James finds Sammy, a young girl who has been suffering for years and eventually dies during their escape. Norman says, “At least she’d be a live slave. Not just another dead runaway.” James replies, “She was dead when I found her. She’s just now died again, but this time she died free.”

That line instantly reminded me of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” Some people survive, but never truly live.

Another line that struck me deeply is:

“The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.“

Percival Everett, James

This is the heartbeat of the book. Literacy as liberation. Thought as danger. Knowledge as freedom.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

Percival Everett, James

James is a light read, but heavy in meaning. If you’re looking for something easy on the mind but enormous in impact, this book carries far more than its page count suggests. A genius piece of fiction.

My Favorite Bits

• “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

• “If enough of them kill you, they’re innocent. Guess what the judge’s name was.” I waited. “’Lawless.’”

• I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed.

• But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

• With my pencil, I wrote myself into being, I wrote myself to here.

• “Folks be lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ‘em.”

• Still, I had my pencil. I had developed a habit of periodically touching it through the fabric of my pocket for comfort.

• “Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like.”

---

Author: Percival Everett
Publication date: 19 March 2024
Number of pages: 303 pages

---