Almost two decades before Percival Everett’s James, a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, lesbian author and playwright Nancy Rawles released her novel, My Jim, a tender look at Black love, heartbreaking loss and unfathomable perseverance, told through the eyes of Sadie, Jim’s wife.
For the 20th anniversary of her Hurston Wright Legacy Award-winning novel, Rawles spoke with Windy City Times about the inspiration behind My Jim and how it differs from both Huck Finn and James.
Windy City Times: Tell us about your time living in Chicago—you were an undergrad at Northwestern? And studied playwriting here, as well?
Nancy Rawles: Yeah, and then lived in Chicago for years after college. I studied playwriting with a professor that just moved back there: Linda Walsh Jenkins. You know, I would still be in Chicago if I could deal with the snow. I love, love, love Chicago.
WCT: How did you get the idea for My Jim?
NR: I got the idea for My Jim because I have a daughter who was adopted from Haiti. Her other mom is Haitian American and an immigrant. So, she’s growing up in this environment, in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle, where she has this very warm and loving Haitian family; she has a church community that is historically and largely African American, and she’s having this experience within this very, very white place that is Seattle.
There was all kinds of controversy over Huckleberry Finn in various schools around Seattle. And I thought, “Oh wow, okay, this kid of mine is gonna, at some point, probably end up in a school where she might be in a class with one, two or, maybe three other Black kids. And if they’re reading Huckleberry Finn, this is gonna be a problem. Because most of the teachers who would be teaching her the book would be in no way qualified to do it. I mean, I know that there’s a way to do that book well, but you have to be quite a scholar in some ways.
WCT: So, My Jim was created for your daughter.
NR: Yes, and for kids like her. If she’s going to be reading Huckleberry Finn, she needs to be reading something else instead or something else, too. Starting at Northwestern and then continuing, I had the opportunity to really do a lot of study of enslaved persons individually but then also slavery as an institution around the Americas and around the world, as well as the United States. That was something that I researched and studied for a long time, something I taught for a long time.
So, I just wanted to write the book for young people especially, but also for anybody who didn’t understand what being trapped in that system, captive in that system, meant to individuals and meant to women. Individuals who were responding and resisting on an every day, every hour basis. It took me a long time to figure how to tell the story, but I very much wanted to tell the story of people who did not escape. Because the people who escaped, that’s such a small number.
WCT: How did you approach writing this novel? In terms of authenticity, the vernacular, time, space and events…?
NR: I did a lot of research. The language of the book, now that was a whole decision, including whether or not to include the N-word. The language of the book, it is not a dialect. It is, as you say, vernacular in many ways. But also, the language has to do with who is writing the story, who is taking the story down. The story is being told by the grandmother and it’s being told to the granddaughter.
A lot of the decisions about how the language was going to appear was thinking, “Okay, I’ve got this person writing down what another person is saying. So, it’s partially, ‘This is exactly what my grandmother is saying,’ and it’s partially, ‘This is how I’m recording what my grandmother’s saying.’ I was thinking about language in a kind of complicated way.
WCT: Do you think it’s fair to say, because I have seen it referred to as such, that My Jim is a critique of Huckleberry Finn?
NR: Umm… no. My Jim is what’s missing from Huck Finn…and what’s missing from James. It’s a woman’s story; it’s a story of the people left behind. It’s an intimate story; it’s a love story. It’s showing your feelings. It’s taken from Huck Finnin that way that Mark Twain mentions Jim’s wife once and doesn’t name her. She’s only referred to kind of in passing. So, it’s taking the story that isn’t there. In that way it could be a critique, I guess. I don’t know, is it a counter narrative?
And it’s who is Jim, also…who is he to his people? Who is he to the people who love him, know him. Mark Twain, for example, makes fun of him being someone who people believe has magical powers to tell the future. When I read that, I went, “Oh, that would make him a seer.” That would make him a really important figure, and this is not a funny thing.
Once Jim is gone, once Jim has escaped down the river, then the story of the wife and the kids and the community, I mean, that’s all continuing without him. To me, that’s more the reality. When somebody escaped, that was really hard on the people left behind in terms of all the ways you would think, but also that they were persecuted. And they were punished. I wanted to show that reality.
WCT: How do you feel that Sadie’s Jim differs from Huck’s Jim differs from James’s Jim?
NR: Sadie’s Jim is her love, and she knows him in an intimate way. This is a straight couple. And this is part of what was interesting to me as someone trying to write this book who isn’t straight, her love for him doesn’t depend on his masculinity. It really depends much more on his tenderness; it depends on his ability to love her. And I think that there are hints of that in Mark Twain and also in James. But I think that those stories, because they focus on the adventure in a very male way, that’s not what Sadie is having. She’s not having an adventure.
WCT: There are so many different kinds of love in the book. I did note the inclusion of a gay character, Andrew, which was mentioned without much fanfare, which I kind of appreciated.
NR: Yeah, it’s just that that’s who he was, and he was good to her and yeah.
WCT: There was an interesting tenderness between Sadie and Gwen, too.
NR: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Gwen is very intentionally a really important love of Sadie’s, as well. The love and loss. Besides her mom, Gwen is kind of the first person that she has just loved so deeply and then lost in such a horrible way. In some ways, Gwen is foundational.
WCT: I was able to hear a dramatic reenactment of My Jim at Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center in Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Mark Twain. The actress voicing Sadie did such a phenomenal job. How does it feel to hear interpretations of the work? Have you ever been surprised by anything?
NR: I have heard many, many different interpretations by actors and I would say every time I am surprised by something. I think this is an experience that writers have, where we write something and we think of it one way, and how people are receiving it is a different story. And people find things that we didn’t know were there, or they find things that were not there, that they are then putting into it.
WCT: Do you have any advice for writers in the LGBTQ+ community?
NR: Wow, there’s a question. Right now, even though it may not always seem like it, is a time when there are a wide variety of opportunities to get your work out in different forms. That being said, there are a lot of people that are going to try to stop along the way, especially as you push into places and space that maybe are not as open. Look for and find your people. Your people are everything.
I had a lot of encouragement from writers when I was younger. I was fortunate to be in rooms with writers like Audre Lorde, who was just so generous, and [poet] Lucille Clifton. I would say that’s also an important way to find your people. You’d be surprised at how many people, even famous people, are kind of delighted when they can look and they can see themselves in you. Or how approachable some people are just by you reaching out or you go to a reading and you talk to them afterwards. Having that is golden. Your people are out there. They’re out there and they want to meet you.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
My Jim by Nancy Rawles can be purchased through major chains and local booksellers, such as Women & Children First.