I’m Ashamed of Myself

I’m ashamed of myself.
 
This month my book club elected to read a book on the NYT Best Seller List: James – a reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
 
I ordered it from Amazon and when it arrived – without reading much about it – I casually glanced at the opening pages and was startled to see a very unfamiliar lingo. 
 
I quickly flipped back to see how many pages James contained: three hundred two pages. 
 
I simply could not – in my attention deficit mode of existence  – imagine reading slave dialect for all those pages. 
 
I shut the book – without further exploring the book’s chapters. I called a friend who also belongs to my book club to suggest maybe choosing an alternate book to read for our upcoming meeting. 
 
I was surprised at her reaction. “It’s not cumbersome at all,” she retorted. “And once you immerse yourself into the story you’ll understand why this book got such rave reviews.”
 
And there were certainly rave reviews – readers describing the book in a variety of glowing terms:
a masterpiece, 
provocative, 
majestic, 
funny, 
wise
and brilliant.
 
Later that evening I got a succinct text from one of the other members of our book club: Read it. It’s well worth it.
 
“Maybe,” I thought, “I should give this book another try. So I skipped the first five pages of James written in tiny script, titled “The Notebook of Daniel Decatur Emmett” and somewhat hesitantly started reading Chapter 1.
 
I was simply blown away.
 
Percival Everett, author of James, is an esteemed author of numerous well received books and a distinguished professor of English at the University of Southern California. In James, he tells the story from the enslaved Jim’s point of view – showcasing Jim’s inherent intelligence, wit and compassion – as never before having been presented.
 
Here are some of Jim’s observations – made all the more riveting by his fluid ease with the English language – a talent he wisely keeps to himself and his companions – far from the “massa’s” ears. (master’s)
 
I was sold when I was born and then sold again. My mother’s mother was from someplace on the continent of Africa…I cannot claim to any knowledge of that world or those people…
 
White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them. The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. 
 
Mumble sometimes so they can have the satisfaction of telling you not to mumble. They enjoy the correction and thinking you’re stupid. Remember, the more they choose to not want to listen, the more we can say to one another around them.
 
Waiting is a big part of a slave’s life, waiting and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands. Waiting for food. Waiting for the ends of days. 
 
We started to laugh and then we spotted a white man up the road. There was nothing that irritated white men more than a couple of slaves laughing. I suspected they were afraid we were laughing at them or else they simply hated the idea of us having a good time.
 
 
The ending of James will surprise you. 
 
The continual struggle for equality, however, will not surprise you. Check out the history of Zion Cemetery in Tampa – founded in 1901 to bury members of the Black community. It was erased from maps and an apartment complex and other buildings were built over it after a developer assured officials all of the bodies had been moved. They had not. 
 
I hope you take the time to read James.

Keep Preserving Your Bloom,