TBE Reads “James”

April 1, 2025, 7:15 pm - 9:00 pm

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James  by author Percival Everett    303 pages

The novel won the 2024 Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.

A brilliant reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and ferociously funny—told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before.

The discussion will be led by Ronnie Weyl.

RSVP to Debbie Herman.