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Month: June 2024

James by Percival Everett

James by Percival Everett

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You have probably heard of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story about a runaway boy, Huck Finn, and a runaway slave, Jim, who decide to sail down the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered to be an anti-racist book, despite its heavy use of a certain racial slur (I should point out that this slur also appears quite frequently in James as well), and the character of Jim is depicted as honorable and intelligent, albeit gullible and loyal to Huck even after Huck plays tricks on him. James is a reimagining of Huck and Jim’s adventures told from Jim’s perspective, and it tells a more authentic story about slavery and the deep-seated racism of the South, something that I think only a Black writer can do. I found James to be an uncomfortable read, but it is also a very interesting story that I recommend whether or not you have read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

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The Book of Negroes is a novel about an African woman who was sold into slavery, and who spends the rest of her life fighting for a tenuous freedom that takes her full circle back to her country of birth. It is a bleak story, of course, but not as violent in its depiction of the slave trade as it could have been, so I found it to be a more palatable read than some other books about slavery that I have read. What I found most interesting about The Book of Negroes, though, was the details about the African slave trade that do not get discussed much. If anything, I recommend reading The Book of Negroes for the history as you can tell Lawrence Hill put much effort into researching this novel.

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The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

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The Radium Girls is a nonfiction account of the incredibly horrifying story of the radium-dial factory workers in the United States. Their job was to paint watches, clocks and military dials with a luminous substance made from radium, but what they did not know is that radium is a dangerous element that would eventually kill them. I had heard of the Radium Girls before reading this book, but Kate Moore’s book really hits home the mistreatment of these women by the companies they worked for, medical professionals, and even their own communities.

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