Walk Around the World Book Club

For December / January we're doing a series I'm calling 'Rolling Down the River'. This month it's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For extra credit - check out Tom Sawyer. Both are by Mark Twain.

From Goodreads: A nineteenth-century boy from a Mississippi River town recounts his adventures as he travels down the river with a runaway slave, encountering a family involved in a feud, two scoundrels pretending to be royalty, and Tom Sawyer's aunt who mistakes him for Tom.

We'll be comparing this with James by Percival Everett in January.

Now that we've read Huck Finn it's time for a modern re-telling from the point of view of Jim. (Wait, why is the book called James? You'll have to read it to find out.)

From Goodreads: When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.