“Astute. . . . Sheds new light on a much-studied character.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A powerful work of historical scholarship that brings to life one of American fiction's most complex creations.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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“Fishkin has written an extraordinary and necessary explication of Twain’s iconic and transcendent character Jim—the moral arbiter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
—Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires
“Lift(s) Jim out of Twain’s frame as a nimble intellect in disguise.” —The New Yorker
“Fishkin crowns her career as a distinguished Mark Twain scholar with this inspired study of his immortal Jim. Exhaustively researched and eloquently argued, it represents a singular service in our national self-knowledge.”—Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes
“Brilliant, original, persuasive and comprehensive, Fishkin’s Jim is the definitive analysis of the most controversial and misunderstood character in American literature….A tour de force!”—Robert Paul Lamb, author of Art Matters: Hemingway, Craft, and the Creation of the Modern Short Story
“A captivating narrative about enslavement and racism well beyond the fictional character Jim.”—G. Faye Dant, founder of Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center
“On first looking into Fishkin’s Jim I envisioned an Elysian toast: Mark says, ‘Jim, here’s to the gentlewoman who finally got you right.’ Jim says, ‘No, Mark, here’s to the brilliant scholar who got us both right.’”—David Bradley, author of The Chaneysville Incident
“Fishkin stands at the pinnacle of Mark Twain studies and criticism. Her astonishing gifts have taken her, and us, far beyond the often-cramped field of enquiries into Mark Twain. She has stood virtually alone in her insistence on race as the thematic foundation of Mark Twain’s literary greatness, producing books, essays, papers and lectures that break open the deceptively bland yet wickedly subtle strategies through which Twain became a defiant truth-teller. . . . Jim, at the end, is nothing short of a call to hope: hope that even in morally chaotic times such as ours, words—written well, read responsibly, and evaluated with bold sophistication—can save us.”—Ron Powers, author of Mark Twain: a Life
Shelley Fisher Fishkin's principal concern throughout her career has been literature and social justice. Much of her work has focused on issues of race and racism in America, and on recovering and interpreting voices that were silenced, marginalized, or ignored in America's past.
