News & Reviews

 Kirkus Reviews: …Jim is someone we have made our own: We project our fears, our sentiments, our fantasies on him. Here, Fishkin restores life to the character. She argues that Twain wished to create a figure of creative power—of imagination, bravery, and eloquence—and dramatize the net slavery cast over him…Fishkin has a fine ear for comedy in Twain, and great insight into dialect In scene after scene, Fishkin shows how Jim is “more active, smart, and assertive than he is often given credit for.”…A powerful work of historical scholarship that brings to life one of American fiction’s most complex creations.

The Arts Fuse: “[Fishkin] sees Jim as a worthy role model in a story full of fools, crooks, swindlers, drunks, murderers and, of course, racists. . . . Various writers and critics have made that case, but perhaps nobody has made it so energetically and thoroughly as Fishkin….In a chapter titled “Jim’s Version,” [Fishkin] provides a long account of the events in Huckleberry Finn in Jim’s voice, in part to present and celebrate the virtues of that voice, and in part to emphasize the importance of the fact that we see everything that happens in the novel only through Huck’s eyes. Twain, who discussed in a preface to Huckleberry Finn how much he’d taken care to produce accurately the dialects of various characters in the novel, would have been pleased….[An] important and thoughtful book… Book Review: “Jim” — An Inspiring Homage to Huckleberry Finn’s Black Comrade

Florida Courier:…Critics have succeeded in making Huckleberry Finn one of the most frequently banned books in the United States. In Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade, Shelley Fisher Fishkin—a professor of Humanities at Stanford University and the author of many books—provides an informative and compelling assessment of these controversies…The fog scene, in which Jim upbraids Huck for playing a cruel trick on him and elicits an apology, Fishkin points out, is a rare moment in 19th century American fiction in which an enslaved Black man teaches a white person to treat others with respect…. Author provides a touching homage to Huckleberry Finn’s Black friend

Foreword Review…”“A compendium about Huckleberry Finn’s Jim, this literary history seeks to cement the novel as a resounding social critique. ...  [T]he middle chapter, which is formatted as a creative retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view, is a virtuoso performance that seamlessly inhabits Jim’s dialect.” Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade