Review: James — A Necessary Mirror for Our Times

“We must understand the past to build a better future.”

Few books embody that truth as profoundly as James. In 2025, when humanity still wrestles with race, class, and identity, Percival Everett’s James arrives not just as a retelling of Huckleberry Finn, but as a reclamation — of voice, dignity, and history itself.

Through James’s eyes, Everett restores depth and agency to a man long flattened by caricature. His intelligence, wit, and quiet courage reveal a truth far greater than any adventure story: survival itself can be an act of defiance, and language — the very words one is allowed to speak — can be a weapon or a shield. Everett masterfully shows how James must code-switch to survive, using dialect as disguise while thinking, feeling, and reasoning in a voice that had been erased from the original narrative.

The book forces us to confront the uncomfortable — the brutality, violence, and moral blindness that underpinned an entire system — yet does so with extraordinary grace. It does not dwell in despair but in determination, showing the unbroken human will to endure and protect one’s sense of self even in the darkest circumstances.

Everett also weaves philosophical reflection through James’s inner world — conversations with ideas of freedom, humanity, and morality that transcend time. These moments remind us that oppression isn’t just physical; it’s intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.

In reimagining Twain’s classic, James doesn’t simply rewrite a story — it corrects the lens through which it was told. It exposes how history often silences the very people whose courage built it.

And that’s why James matters in 2025. It asks us to recognize that the same hierarchies that once enslaved people continue to echo today — in subtler, systemic ways. It strips away the illusions of superiority, reminding us that we are human first, and everything else — race, class, nationality — is superficial, man-made nonsense.

James is a mirror held up to history and to ourselves. It is not an easy book, but it is a necessary one — beautifully written, fiercely intelligent, and deeply humane. It teaches that resilience is not only surviving the impossible, but reclaiming the right to be seen, heard, and remembered.

A vital work for our times — and for the future we must still dare to build.