Emily’s review of James > Likes and Comments
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What????
Kala said it better than I ever could…???
I was going to complement you, as a Floridian, for reading the book. Then I realized you only got to chapter 2 before giving your "absolutely dreadful" verdict. Perhaps DeSantis has published a list of prescient pointers for judging a book after only reading 28 pages (if you got that far).
You nailed it. If I were a POC, I'd be offended. So, are we saying that, despite being PhD material, you can't outsmart these dumb white folks? Nothing about this makes sense to me. I loved Erasure, the Trees, not so much. Think I'm done with Everett.
Why is it so confusing to people that not everyone thought this book was the greatest piece of literature to ever be written? I'd refer people to the top two-star review (I believe) by GR user leynes, who wrote a refreshingly honest review detailing why it didn't work, pointing to four major problems in: 1) writing style, 2) plot/narrative devices, 3) characterisation, and 4) purpose/intention. She had this to say about the author's portrayal of Black women (quite sad, given the amount of hype this book has gotten, that he is indeed so dismissive of them - I haven't finished the book to completion, but I've read enough to be particularly angry about this part):
What Everett does to his female characters is truly mind-boggling. None of them are well fleshed out. All (!) of them are used as devices to fuel Jim's story along. I'm truly baffled that very few reviewers seem to have a problem with that. Let's start with Jim's wife Sadie and his daughter Elizabeth. We as readers never get to know them. All we're supposed to know about them is that Jim loves them and wants to reunite with them. They are simply used as a motivation for Jim to run away and his desire to free them. We never explore their relationship and bond. Especially with a reveal that comes later in the book (I'll talk about it in the last section of this review due to spoilers), I felt like we really needed to explore his marriage better... because WTF? What did Sadie say to all of this? When and how did she and Jim get together?
But most appalling are Everett's use of Sammy and Katie. Sammy is a young Black woman that Jim and Norman free during one of their stops. Sammy reveals to them that she was repeatedly raped by her white overseer since she was a child. Something that is just so so horrible and it actually made me close the book for a second because I really struggle with reading about such heavy topics. But instead of giving Sammy's characters any purpose, Everett has her shot 10 pages later during their flight, only for Jim and Norman to have a conversation about freedom, with Jim spewing the bullshit that at least now she "died free". Excuse me? That death is the best she could've hoped for? Fuck that!
I felt a similar rage when Everett introduces the character of Katie, only for Jim to witness her being raped by the white overseer Mister Hopkins. That made me so damn mad. First of all, why did you have to describe her rape in detail on the page?? Just exploitative and unnecessary. And why don't you give this woman any thoughts, any story beyond this? I kid you not, she is simply introduced to be raped, so that Jim can muster up the courage/find the rage to murder Hopkins afterwards. It is so uncomfortable.
Again, those words from that review are attributable to the Goodreads reviewer leynes, not myself.
I actually laughed out loud at that point. Especially when James is "giving lessons" on how to speak "slave talk". 4
Maybe the discourses on irony were a bit too much of Everett voicing his own interests, but Frederick Douglass was much more eloquent than many contemporary PhDs.
When I read this book, I considered the author's goal of explaining how the characters' lives came to be in the 1800s in America. The Trans-Atlantic African slave trade began in the 15th century (although Africans had been enslaved throughout the world long before the Portuguese sold them to Europe, who then sold them to America). It seems probable that, for American slaves to learn English and advance their language or education while surviving the culture and mentality of slave owners, movements such as educating children in secret with strategies for survival would include how they speak in public. This probably would have been going on for generations. An educated slave was a threat to the ignorance and cruelty of slave owners. With education comes power. Slaves were viewed as property similar to livestock and animals. Punishment for doing things that free people do (like read, write, understand, and have autonomy) would most likely be carried out with lynching and all types of brutality that white people felt entitled to do to slaves. American culture allowed slavery, which means the treatment of all slaves, women slaves, and child slaves depicted in the book would be probable. I'm also curious, when you asked "what, pray tell, is wrong with those children who have not already been socialized appropriately?", did you not believe that he was teaching them a method of behavior that would be life-saving for them? Do you actually believe children of slaves were "socialized appropriately"??? Even more curious to know what you believe "appropriate" socialization would be in the South in the 1800s related to slaves?
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Kala (ReaderthenBlogger)
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May 17, 2024 11:10PM
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Kala said it better than I ever could…???
I was going to complement you, as a Floridian, for reading the book. Then I realized you only got to chapter 2 before giving your "absolutely dreadful" verdict. Perhaps DeSantis has published a list of prescient pointers for judging a book after only reading 28 pages (if you got that far).
You nailed it. If I were a POC, I'd be offended. So, are we saying that, despite being PhD material, you can't outsmart these dumb white folks? Nothing about this makes sense to me. I loved Erasure, the Trees, not so much. Think I'm done with Everett.
Why is it so confusing to people that not everyone thought this book was the greatest piece of literature to ever be written? I'd refer people to the top two-star review (I believe) by GR user leynes, who wrote a refreshingly honest review detailing why it didn't work, pointing to four major problems in: 1) writing style, 2) plot/narrative devices, 3) characterisation, and 4) purpose/intention. She had this to say about the author's portrayal of Black women (quite sad, given the amount of hype this book has gotten, that he is indeed so dismissive of them - I haven't finished the book to completion, but I've read enough to be particularly angry about this part): What Everett does to his female characters is truly mind-boggling. None of them are well fleshed out. All (!) of them are used as devices to fuel Jim's story along. I'm truly baffled that very few reviewers seem to have a problem with that. Let's start with Jim's wife Sadie and his daughter Elizabeth. We as readers never get to know them. All we're supposed to know about them is that Jim loves them and wants to reunite with them. They are simply used as a motivation for Jim to run away and his desire to free them. We never explore their relationship and bond. Especially with a reveal that comes later in the book (I'll talk about it in the last section of this review due to spoilers), I felt like we really needed to explore his marriage better... because WTF? What did Sadie say to all of this? When and how did she and Jim get together?
But most appalling are Everett's use of Sammy and Katie. Sammy is a young Black woman that Jim and Norman free during one of their stops. Sammy reveals to them that she was repeatedly raped by her white overseer since she was a child. Something that is just so so horrible and it actually made me close the book for a second because I really struggle with reading about such heavy topics. But instead of giving Sammy's characters any purpose, Everett has her shot 10 pages later during their flight, only for Jim and Norman to have a conversation about freedom, with Jim spewing the bullshit that at least now she "died free". Excuse me? That death is the best she could've hoped for? Fuck that!
I felt a similar rage when Everett introduces the character of Katie, only for Jim to witness her being raped by the white overseer Mister Hopkins. That made me so damn mad. First of all, why did you have to describe her rape in detail on the page?? Just exploitative and unnecessary. And why don't you give this woman any thoughts, any story beyond this? I kid you not, she is simply introduced to be raped, so that Jim can muster up the courage/find the rage to murder Hopkins afterwards. It is so uncomfortable.
Again, those words from that review are attributable to the Goodreads reviewer leynes, not myself.
I actually laughed out loud at that point. Especially when James is "giving lessons" on how to speak "slave talk". 4
Maybe the discourses on irony were a bit too much of Everett voicing his own interests, but Frederick Douglass was much more eloquent than many contemporary PhDs.
When I read this book, I considered the author's goal of explaining how the characters' lives came to be in the 1800s in America. The Trans-Atlantic African slave trade began in the 15th century (although Africans had been enslaved throughout the world long before the Portuguese sold them to Europe, who then sold them to America). It seems probable that, for American slaves to learn English and advance their language or education while surviving the culture and mentality of slave owners, movements such as educating children in secret with strategies for survival would include how they speak in public. This probably would have been going on for generations. An educated slave was a threat to the ignorance and cruelty of slave owners. With education comes power. Slaves were viewed as property similar to livestock and animals. Punishment for doing things that free people do (like read, write, understand, and have autonomy) would most likely be carried out with lynching and all types of brutality that white people felt entitled to do to slaves. American culture allowed slavery, which means the treatment of all slaves, women slaves, and child slaves depicted in the book would be probable. I'm also curious, when you asked "what, pray tell, is wrong with those children who have not already been socialized appropriately?", did you not believe that he was teaching them a method of behavior that would be life-saving for them? Do you actually believe children of slaves were "socialized appropriately"??? Even more curious to know what you believe "appropriate" socialization would be in the South in the 1800s related to slaves?
