Reading Skywards – Your Friendly Bookshelf

INFORMATION ABOUT THIS BOOK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 19, 2024
Format:  Hardcover, Paperback, audiobook, and ebook
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
Genre:  Black and African American Historical Fiction

MY PERSONAL OPINION OF “JAMES”

This book has been on my TBR since the end of last year. I put a hold on it at Libby, which lasted months, and finally, I was able to borrow it three days ago. Yes, it took three days to read this book, which for me is super fast. I honestly knew very little about what the book was about, and I am glad I did. This was an exquisite surprise.

The book had short chapters and was so easy to read. The storyline was sad, hopeful, scary, packed with action and compassion, with the evil of the stavery wide open to be seen and felt. James was smart, ingenious, sensitive, and very raw.

The characters along the story were paced at the right time as James’ journey went on. With tragedy leading the way, and hope picking up the pieces again and again. The end was empowering, with James recognizing his anger and acting on it, still with a sound mind that led his entire journey, and never seemed to lose.

Oh, what a book. First book of the year and I can’t wait to see what is next.

PREMISE OF THE BOOK AS FOUND IN AMAZON / GOODREADS:

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. 

MY RATING: 4.8

QUOTES FROM THE BOOK

“I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.” 

“I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.” 

“It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PERCIVAL EVERETT is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was released in 2023. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.

Bibliography:

• The Trees: a Novel
• Erasure: a Novel
• I am Not Sidney Poitier: a Novel
• Telephone: a Novel
• Dr. No: a Novel
• No Much Blue: a Novel
• Walk me to the Distance: a Novel
• Wounded: a Novel
• Suder: a Novel
• Assumption: a Novel