Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300268324)

The origins and influence of Jim, Mark Twain's beloved yet polarizing literary figure

Mark Twain's Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self-aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the first fully drawn Black fathers in American fiction. Haunted by the family he has left behind, Jim acts as father figure to Huck, the white boy who is his companion as they raft the Mississippi toward freedom. Jim is also a highly polarizing figure: he is viewed as an emblem both of Twain's alleged racism and of his opposition to racism; a diminished character inflected by minstrelsy and a powerful challenge to minstrel stereotypes; a reason for banning Huckleberry Finn and a reason for teaching it; an embarrassment and a source of pride for Black readers.

Eminent Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin probes these controversies, exploring who Jim was, how Twain portrayed him, and how the world has responded to him. The result is Jim as we have never seen him before--a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most memorable Black characters in American fiction.

Author: Shelley Fisher Fishkin
ISBN-10: 0300268327
ISBN-13: 9780300268324
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/15/2025
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover