James

by Percival Everett

At 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.

“How am I s’posed to know what good is?” “Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ’splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.” “But the law says…” “Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”

Drowning to death always made a person more interesting,

And so, after these books, the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

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.”

“Easter, do you remember when you first arrived here?” “Here with Wiley or here in hell?” “Hell.” “I don’t remember much of my home, but I remember the ship. I remember the abuse. I remember the splashing. You?” “Born in hell. Sold before my mother could hold me.”

“What would they have done to you if they had figured out that you were exactly what you were pretending to be?”

“Listen, you’ve got to relax,” I said. “To all of them you’re white. Hell, to me you’re white.” “There’s no need to be insulting.”

It pained me to think that without a white person with me, without a white-looking face, I could not travel safely through the light of the world,

reminded me of women not being safe walking alone

“To fight in a war,” he said. “Can you imagine?” “Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?” I asked. “I reckon.” “Yes, Huck, I can imagine.”

sourness of his hair and didn’t like it.

versus all the comments of the “sweet smell” of a Black person

“Nigger, you are in more trouble than you can imagine,” he said. “Why on earth would you think that I can’t imagine the trouble I’m in? After you’ve tortured me and eviscerated me and emasculated me and left me to burn slowly to death, is there something else you’ll do to me? Tell me, Judge Thatcher, what is there that I can’t imagine?”

I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. 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.