“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.”
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I only knew that this was a kind of retelling of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, but it was so much more.

This book was deeply saddening and many times devastating. Everett conveyed the power of education, both for good and for evil, so well. The expressions of racism and the covert and overt ways that it expresses itself were present throughout. 

I felt through Everett’s words the isolation of a runaway like James. That his power to read and write was revered by other slaves and reviled by whites felt like such a strong contrast. His discovery of his voice through writing and acceptance of emotions once denied to him was magnificent.

I recognize that this is but one story of so many, and yet the way it represented a very prevalent racial trauma was so powerful. I love the use of the pencil as a symbol for James’ resistance, and promise of a life that isn’t the brutality he has always known. A promise to be able to tell his and others true stories.

I also thought that Everett‘s revision of Hucks character was a really inspired take on the original. To center the story on James rather than Huck and blow apart the dialect that I found so off-putting in the original made this so much more readable, and thus impactful, than the original text. 

An excellent and important book.