Go Big Read Display

This year’s Go Big Read selection is James, the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Percival Everett. With sharp humor and powerful insight, Everett gives new life to a classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, making James a standout work of modern American literature.

James re-tells Mark Twain’s classic novel, exploring the experiences and inner world of its titular character, known as Jim in the original text. In doing so, it touches on a vast array of topics from history, literature, and philosophy. Because of its diverse subject matter, creating a display to support our understanding of James meant pulling books from many different parts of College Library’s collections. First, we wanted to give historical context for the American system of race-based chattel slavery that James was born into. To understand his story, we need to understand the development of slavery as an institution that came to define economic, political, and social conditions in the pre-Civil War era in which the book takes place. In addition, we hope to emphasize the lived experiences of enslaved people, since James is a (fictionalized) personal story of the horror of enslavement and the struggle to escape it. Our display includes books of enslaved people’s own stories to provide real accounts of what Everett fictionalizes. To expand on some of the specific problems that James faces, we also added titles about escaping and resisting enslavement and about the experiences of enslaved families, who were often forcibly separated. Finally, we have books that discuss slavery’s legacy that can connect our reading to present conditions of injustice and inequity. 

We cannot talk about James without talking about the story it adapts, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and its author, Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn remains a staple of American literature, by one of the United States’ most celebrated authors. James adds to the discussion about Huckleberry Finn’s depiction of enslaved Black people. Several titles in the display tackle the debate over Twain’s portrayal of Jim, and whether it succeeded in critiquing slavery, relied on racist stereotypes, or both. Others are about Twain’s life and world to give more context to his work. (P.S.- You might also spot a few brief introductions to a couple of famous philosophers that make appearances in James. If you want to learn more about them, keep your eyes peeled for some very small, pocket-sized books! Happy reading!)

Percival Everett will be on campus to speak about his novel at an event on Tuesday, November 4, from 7-8:30pm in Varsity Hall, Union South. For more information about the keynote, and the Go Big Read program in general, please visit their website.