James

If you could sit down and have dinner with anyone, who would it be?

If Mark Twain happened to be asked this question, his answer is most likely to be Percival Everett. Or vice versa.

Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. I have enjoyed his new novel James, in which he re-invented Mark Twain's novel along the Mississippi River. You will never look at The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the same way again after reading James. The latter is a story told from the perspective of Jim, the runaway slave and companion of Huck. 

You can call him Jim or James. You can hear Jim speak in nigger's way and in correct English. In private, Jim speaks and writes in perfect, formal English. In front of a white person, he speaks as every enslaved person does. 

Everett showed us the bilingual fluency of Jim who had reminded his daughter, "The only ones who suffer when the whites are made to feel inferior is us (blacks)."

Here is a perfect example of Jim's situational translations: While a slave is walking down the street and see that a white neighbour's kitchen is on fire. The neighbour is standing in her yard, her back to her house, unaware. How should a slave tell the white neighbour?

"Fire, fire." That might have been what you suggest.

"Direct. And that's almost correct," Jim would correct you. The real answer should be "Lawdy, missum! Looky dere."

Why? Jim reminded us, "Because the whites need to know everything before niggers. Because they need to name everything."