‘Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined’ by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

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Big Jim and the White Boy by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

With Mark Twain, a distinctively American literature was born, and little wonder that slavery was part of his life story. His uncle was a slave owner and one of those enslaved men may have provided inspiration for Jim, the runaway who traveled down the Mississippi with Huck in Twain’s masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Of course, Twain wrote from a white perspective, and his depiction of Jim adhered to the era’s stereotypes, whether unconsciously or in a bid to placate readers of what was, after all, a subversive take on American society.

A cottage industry of Huck Finn revisions has sprung up, starting with Nancy Rawles’ My Jim (2005) and including Perceval Everett’s much-discussed James(2024). The latest is an entertaining graphic novel, Big Jim and the White Boy, by Eisner Award-winners David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson.

In Big Jim, that mythical journey down the Mississippi is recounted by Jim, an elderly man in 1932 and eager to set the story straight. He’s especially annoyed by the dialect Twain put in his character’s mouth. “Now I ain’t sayin’ that I speak the most proper English,” he begins before discounting all that “sho’nuff” jive as making him sound “ignorant.” And by the way: Jim was the adult on the raft, brave and resourceful in the face of the adversity he shared with young Huck.

The narrative of Big Jim and the White Boy cuts away to a university history class in the present day, where the legend of the “docile slave” and another antebellum stories, perpetuated by Confederate apologists, are given context.

Get Big Jim and the White Boy at Amazon here.

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