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Adam Shields

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Adam Shields is currently reading

Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead

by C. Robert Mesle

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— May 09, 2026 09:12PM

May 09, 2026 09:11PM

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James

by Percival Everett

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read in April 2025

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Adam Shields said: " Summary: A retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's viewpoint.

While I have read some of Mark Twain's books, I have never read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Almost all of my background for the story of Huck Finn is from the 1968-69 live action and animation serie Summary: A retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's viewpoint.

While I have read some of Mark Twain's books, I have never read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Almost all of my background for the story of Huck Finn is from the 1968-69 live action and animation series, "The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The show used three live action characters who played Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, but was otherwise entirely animated. You can see an example here. My memory is pretty vague, but I remember it being almost entirely fantasy. The children found magical creatures as they took a raft down the Mississippi. That was poor preparation for reading James, a retelling of Huck Finn through the perspective of Jim.

My perception prior to reading was that Jim was a slave about the same age as Huck Finn, but once I was a little way into the book I check and the original book had Jim/James in his late 20s. The story keeps to the outline of Huck Finn. Jim runs away to keep from being sold away from his wife and daughter. While at the same time and unrelated, Huck Finn fakes his death to get away from his abusive and alcoholic father.

Jim and Huck Finn find one another while they are both hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Jim realizes that he will be blamed for Huck's death, and at the same time knows that Huck is too young to care for himself and so takes Huck under his care as they try to get away. The book starts out in Hannibal, IL. I had previously assumed Hannibal, MO was further south, but it is 100 miles due west of Springfield IL. Missouri was a slave state and while it would have taken longer to get to than today, Springfield was where Abraham Lincoln was based prior to his election as president. The vague initial plan was to take the Mississippi River south to the Ohio River (about 200 miles) and escape to freedom.

Huck Finn was written as a satire but also a children's book. It seems it was mostly told as a series of adventures and Percival Everett in writing this retelling has to fit this new story within the constraints of the old. Huck and Jim spend a lot of time apart in the original which allows for a variety of new elements.

I did spend a little time reading through Huck Finn summaries to make sure I wasn't missing anything too important, but I do not think that you need to read Huck Finn First. The ending of James seems to deviate from Huck Finn pretty significantly.

Huck Finn was at least partially satire, but the overt racism that was part of the satire means that I many people no longer read Huck Finn. And it is why I haven't read it. I am not sure I would have read James if so many people I know had not recommended it. Telling the story from the perspective of a slave, who was continually afraid for himself and his family and who had experienced the beatings and abuse of slavery makes this very different in tone from what I think Twain was doing.

But there is still humor. When alone, the enslaved characters talk without dialect and reveal how much they keep themselves hidden from white people. Jim can read and write and his attempt to get the materials to write his story is a significant part of the plot development. There is a tension between remaining enslaved and alive and the risk of seeking freedom while risking death. That tension also carries throughout the book and shifts over time. Jim's hand is forced. He wouldn't run away if he had not found out that he was supposed to be sold down the river to New Orleans. And he wouldn't have run as he did, if he hadn't known that he would be lynched for killing Huck. And throughout the story, one event after another continue to force Jim's hand to take greater and greater risks because he knows he really has no choice.

I understand why James has become such a popular book. There are aspects that I didn't love, but I think many of them are about the constraints of the retelling method. I generally really like books that are retold from a different perspective. James was well written and realistic. At the same time, part of why this has mattered is the contemporary culture it is being written to.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/james-a-novel-by-pe... ...more "

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— May 09, 2026 04:37AM

May 09, 2026 04:36AM · see review

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The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel

by Gary J. Dorrien

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— May 09, 2026 09:13PM

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Adam’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life

Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life by Gary J. Dorrien

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On the road, at Columbia, and even at Union, I meet people for whom Christianity is a ruined word. They ask me nicely, or with puzzlement, or hostility, why I am a Christian. I try to explain that I was drawn long ago into the spirit and ...more

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Adam’s Quotes

“This last point is only beginning to dawn on us white Christian Americans, who still believe too easily that racial reconciliation is the goal and that it may be achieved through a straightforward transaction: white confession in exchange for black forgiveness. But mostly this transactional concept is a strategy for making peace with the status quo—which is a very good deal indeed if you are white. I am not trying to be cynical here, but merely honest about how little even well-meaning whites have believed they have at stake in racial reconciliation efforts. Whites, and especially white Christians, have seen this project as an altruistic one rather than a desperate life-and-death struggle for their own future.”
― Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

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“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

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