Literary Fiction · Free kit
James
Enslaved in Hannibal, Missouri, the man the town calls Jim overhears that Miss Watson means to sell him downriver — and decides he will not be separated from his wife, Sadie, and his daughter, Lizzie. Percival Everett's 2024 retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows that flight in Jim's own voice: a secretly literate, bitterly funny narrator who performs the dialect white people expect, then drops it the second they are gone. Raft, flood, con men, and a minstrel troupe carry him down the Mississippi as rumor of war gathers. What he wants is a pencil, a name of his own, and a way back to the people he loves. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
“I am a sign. I am your future. I am James.”
Complete free book club kit
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Plan your meeting
James This or That
Answer in under three seconds. No wrong answers — only revealing ones.
1 / 40
Rapid fire (60 seconds)
Read these aloud as fast as the group can shout answers.
- 1. River at night or River at dawn?
- 2. Pencil stub or Stolen notebook?
- 3. Sweet tea or Black coffee?
- 4. Short sharp chapters or One long raft of a novel?
- 5. Laugh under your breath or Sit in silence after a chapter?
- 6. Maps or Libraries?
- 7. Retelling or Original?
- 8. Satire or Tragedy?
- 9. Travel by water or Travel by woods?
- 10. Read in a gulp or Pause after the hard chapters?