James

by Percival Everett

Let them work to understand you. 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.” “Why did God set it up like this?”

let them feel superior

the better they feel, the safer we are.”

Feelings to feel safe

if enough people do it, it’s not a crime.”

Justifying crime

capsizing,

Word

foraged

Words

that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

Reading

chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

Enemy

stoic

Words

chivalrous

Words

“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”

Take lie they want andd throw truth that scares

“Tell them I’m called February, but that I was born in June. They like thinking that we’re stupid like that.”

Name feb born in June though

“You know, dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones.”

Dangerous dull tools

“Too thick to navigate and too thin to plow. I heard someone say that once.”

River crossing

The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.

It was the language

“Are you getting paid for rowing? No. Are you rowing because you’re afraid of me and what I might do to you? Yes, Judge Thatcher.”

Slavery doing things out of fear and nothing in return