My Jim

A Novel

Nancy Rawles

$35

Paperback

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English

Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.,U.S.
15 July 2011

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

WINNER OF THE HURSTON-WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD IN FICTION WINNER OF THE ALEX AWARD

A spare and beautiful meditation on love and longing, My Jim holds an unrelenting gaze on the life and world of Sadie, the wife of Jim from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

""Rawles covers territory Twain did not. . . . As heart-wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature.""-The New York Times Book Review

Written in the great literary tradition of novels like Sula, My Jim considers the historically important question What happened to those enslaved persons who didn't escape? by investigating the fictional world of Sadie Watson, a formerly enslaved woman. In her old age, she narrates a tale pieced together from her life born in slavery as a means to help her granddaughter decide on whether to marry her love and move away.

As Sadie tells her granddaughter her love story, she paints a beautiful and complex portrait of her Jim-a gifted seer, a man of wit and charisma. When faced with the prospect of being sold, Jim escapes down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck Finn. Reviled as a witch, punished for Jim's escape, and convinced he has died, Sadie must rely on her own will, the objects she has carried from her past, and her love for Jim to animate her life and see her through.

A nuanced critique of the great American novel that mirrors the true story of countless enslaved women, My Jim is a haunting and inspiring story about inheritance, longing, and the liberating power of Black love in a world that did everything to extinguish it.

By: Nancy Rawles
Imprint: Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.,U.S.
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 132mm, Spine: 12mm
Weight: 142g
ISBN: 9781400054015
ISBN 10: 140005401X
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 15 July 2011
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Nancy Rawles is an award-winning novelist and playwright. Her novel Love Like Gumbo was the recipient of the American Book Award. She lives in Seattle.

Reviews for My Jim: A Novel

“A wonderful first-person narrative . . . both a love story and a chronicle of a brutal time in American history.” —Chicago Tribune “My Jim is a compelling, eloquently written novel that can stand on its own merits beside the great works that inspired it.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Rawles’s affecting spin-off of Twain’s classic gives the resilient Sadie Watson a harrowing story and a powerful voice to tell it.” —Entertainment Weekly “In a spare, naturalistic style that’s reminiscent of oral history, Rawles covers territory Twain did not....As heart-wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature.” —New York Times Book Review