Are you looking for your next great book club selection?
Are you a book club host in charge of discussion questions?
Check out this book club kit for James!

I have noticed that visitors frequently arrive at this website as a result of searching for book club discussion questions. Occasionally, I will address certain discussion possibilities for book clubs in my reviews, but I have not created specific posts that book club members could use as a resource. Thus, a new feature is born: Book Club Kits. I’m grateful to Jo @ JoLindsdell for the inspiration and encouragement and for modeling what this post might look like. (Jo has several book club kits to check out!)
Book Club Kits will be posted in the feed as I create them but will live under a Menu Tab. This is the THIRD but not the last! I envision maybe four per year (one per quarter) and each one will be one of my five-star reads.

Let me know what you think! Does a Book Club Kit interest you?

Previous Book Club Kits: West With Giraffes and Go as a River.

***Reading beyond this point will reveal SPOILERS.”

Book Club Kit: James by Percival Everett

*This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
**This post contains SPOILERS**

Book Information:

Genre: Historical Fiction (1885)
Categories: Reimagined Classic, Coming-Of-Age, Slavery, Friendship, Freedom, Survival, Adventure on the Mississippi River
Publisher: ‎ DoubleDay
Publication Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN : 1035031248 ISBN-13 : 978-0385550369
ASIN : BOC8MGS6GR
Number of Pages: 304
Purchase Link
Content Consideration (TW): slavery, child abuse, sexual assault, physical abuse
My Reading Experience: I skimmed through Huckleberry Finn as a preread, but this is not necessary. I was captivated with James from page one by Jim’s point of view, and I found the reading experience compelling, sobering, thought-provoking, and unputdownable.
Link to my 5 Star Review

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Awards

2024 Kirkus Prize

2024 National Book Award Finalist

2024 National Book Award Winner!

2024 Amazon Best Book So Far

Amazon Best Fiction of 2024

2024 Booker Prize Short List

Pulitzer Prize 2025
Mr. Everett’s book won for “an accomplished reconsideration of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom,” the committee said.

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My Summary of James

James is a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn told from Jim’s point of view. Huck is running from his abusive father and enslaved Jim is running to avoid being sold and separated from his family. Those who have read Huck Finn are aware of the many harrowing adventures Huck and Jim experience, the mishaps they survive, and the colorful characters they encounter. James includes some of these events, but it’s truly a story of Jim’s intelligence, observations, and pursuit of freedom that compel us to turn the pages until we reach the riveting conclusion.

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Historical Notes:

James is a reimagining of the classic Huckleberry Finn from enslaved Jim’s point of view.

Six things to know about Huck Finn before reading James

The Mississippi River

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About the Author, Percival Everett

Award-winning author PERCIVAL EVERETT is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was released in 2023. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.

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Author Interviews

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Reviews:

If you have a blog review of James (my review here), drop it in the comments and I’ll include it here.
Kirkus Review
Book Marks Review
New York Times Review

Everyone’s Asking Should I Read Huckleberry Finn Before James

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Book Flights/Companion Reads:

It might be interesting (but not necessary) to read/reread Huckleberry Finn concurrently with James to observe similarities and differences. Here is an article that might inform your decision. You can find a free copy of Huckleberry Finn on Project Gutenberg here. I reread the beginning, Chapter 31, and the conclusion before beginning James.
An obvious companion read might be The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
An interesting book flight for James might be This Tender Land by William Kent Kreuger which is a story of 4 runaways who travel down the Missouri River and experience harrowing adventures and colorful characters.

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Book Club Discussion Questions:

1.

Describe your experience with Huckleberry Finn and Huck’s world. Have you read the original? If so, explain your reading experience. Have you read Tom Sawyer or other books set in this time period? Have you read other work by Mark Twain? What were your expectations about reading James? Did Percival’s story surprise you? Do you feel that Percival Everett made an important contribution with his reimagining? Do you think the book was necessary? Does it enhance or complement the classic?

2.

In James, “code-switching” is a matter of survival. Have you observed or experienced code-switching? I suppose we all practice some form of code-switching in our lives. Dialogue with our friends might differ from the dialogue we have with our grandparents. Everyday slang might differ from the language used in formal settings. What did you think about the “language lessons” Jim provides for his children? From your unique perspective, do you think code-switching is essential or not? Who benefits from code-switching? Is code-switching more useful or prevalent in certain circumstances or situations? If you are white, how did Jim’s code-switching instruction affect you? Can you appreciate or understand code-switching from Jim’s perspective?

3.

The presence of water in a story is usually symbolic. How do you think the river is symbolic in James? Do you notice other symbolism in the story?

“It’s safe. Just sit calmly and the river will take care of us.”

4.

Of the many themes, explain a strong connection you have with one.

5.

Which of Jim’s or Huck’s strengths do you most admire? What character traits do you share with Jim or Huck Finn?

6.

Everett has commented that Twain was unable to tell Jim’s story. Do you think it is important for Jim to narrate his own story? What was the author’s purpose in reimagining Huck Finn from Jim’s POV? What other character from literature would you like to see narrate his/her own story?

7.

Describe your comfort level with this hard-hitting story. Were you offended? Intrigued? Outraged? Sympathetic? Defensive? Mocked? Critiqued?

8.

Huck and James escape down a river. How safe or comfortable do you feel on a river? Do you feel that their plan is wise? What other options might they have had? What would you have done in their circumstances? Have you been tempted to run away or have you been faced with a survival experience?

9.

What is the most thought-provoking aspect of Jim’s experiences with the traveling minstrel show?

10.

What do Jim and Huck have in common? In what way is Huck important in the story?

11.

What is the central idea in the story? Percival Everett states that James (and Huck Finn) is a book about enslaved persons and not a book about slavery. Do you see this story in the same way? In what ways do you think Huck’s character and his interactions with Jim add a layer of depth to the story and help convey the main idea? Huck struggles to understand the world around him, especially as he begins to notice that Jim loves and cares for his family just like white people. Can you envision how readers in 1885 must have reacted to this radical portrayal? In what way does the Huck/Jim relationship reflect Twain’s purpose in writing the story?

12.

The author of James establishes a strong sense of place through vivid descriptive and sensory details. Which part of the environment did you experience most vividly in your imagination? Could you envision the freedom of the river? The desperate situation of enslaved individuals?

13.

Have you experienced the Mississippi River? What big river experiences do you have?

14.

Did reading James give you a book hangover? (i.e. Did you find it difficult to transition to your next read? Did you think about your reading experience for days or weeks?)

Share the most memorable part of your reading experience. Was there a memorable passage, quote, image, conversation, or event that will live in your mind/heart for years to come?

For me, it was “the pencil.” Wow! Powerful! I’ll never see a pencil stub again without thinking of this story. Did this impact you?

“I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.”
“I knew I owed it to him to write something important.”
~James

15.

What do you appreciate about Huck’s character growth, the growing bond between James and Huck, or Jim’s obvious care for Huck? Does anything in their relationship foreshadow the “big reveal”?

16.

What are your feelings/thoughts about the act of revenge that Jim committed? Was this a shocking turn of events for you? How can this revenge be explained, justified, condemned, or understood? How do you reconcile Jim’s act of revenge with this quote: “I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage.”

17.

Escape and avoiding capture drive the plot in the story. Does the conclusion resolve this in satisfactory ways for both characters?

18.

What do you think of the title? What are your thoughts about Jim’s name change? Does this change the story for you? Why do you think Percival Everett wrote this story? What is the most important message of the book?

19.

What are your thoughts about the ending? Were you satisfied? In what ways does it compare with or differ from the classic? Did you find the “big reveal” surprising? Do you wish it had been more fully developed or was it just right? Could you understand Jim’s motives in keeping the secret? How will this secret affect Huck’s future? What, if anything, would you change about the ending?

20.

If you were to recommend James to a friend, what superlative would you use to describe the book or your reading experience?

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Quotes:

“Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency.”

“White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them.”

“We must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble….because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.”

“The better [whites] feel, the safer we are.”

“I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage.”

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.”

There were those slaves who claimed a distinction between good masters and cruel masters. Most of us considered such to be distinction without difference.”

“I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written”

“On occasion, as we traveled at night, the river was all ours. It was a vast highway to a scary nowhere.”

“I knew I owed it to him to write something important.”

“He took the tie, put it around his own neck, put a knot in it and then slipped it over my head.”

“It’s safe. Just sit calmly and the river will take care of us.”

“Because Huck, and I hope you hear this without thinking I’m crazy or joking, you are my son.” Huck shot out a short laugh. “What?” “You are my son. and I am your father.” He has always looked to me for protection, even when he thought he was trying to protect me. “Liar,” he cried. I took it. “I ain’t your son. I ain’t no n….”

“Huck showed the excitement of a boy at the sight of our catch. I was reminded that he was just that, a boy. He could have gone through life without the knowledge I had given him and he would have been no worse off for it. But I understood at that moment that I had shared the truth with him for myself. I needed for him to have a choice.”

“As happens with the frightened and unprepared, we scattered. Some of us would be caught. Some of us would be killed. Probably some of us would go crawling back. Sadie, Lizzie, and I made it…”

“And who are you?” “I am James.” “James what?” “Just James.”

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A Themed Book Club Party

James and Huck did a great deal of fishing, so a fish/fishing theme is easy!

(Etsy also has an amazing collection of ideas for fish-themed decorations and snacks for any party.)

Fish themed paper goods

Themed Snacks

You could find a cookie decorator and use these decorated cookies as inspiration!

Here’s a fish-shaped cookie cutter for DIY!

There’s always fish crackers (in your choice of flavors)!

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My book reviews and Book Club Kits are FREE!
Sharing my posts and reviews is a wonderful way to support my blog. Donations help offset the costs. Thanks in advance!

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QOTD:

Have you read James or would you consider it for your book club?
Do you find this book club kit helpful?
Let me know if you end up using it for your book club and how it goes.

ICYMI: How to start a book club.

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Happy Reading Book Buddies!

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke
“I love the world of words where life and literature connect.”
~Denise J Hughes
“Reading good books ruins you for reading bad ones.”
~Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I read because books are a form of transportation, teaching, and connection. Books take us to places we’ve never been, teach us about our world, and help us understand human experience.”
~Madeleine Riley

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