Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade

Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher

Paperback

Series: Black Lives

Biographies GeneralBlack American HistoryLiterary Criticism

Publisher Price: $22.00

ISBN10: 0300288611
ISBN13: 9780300288612
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Mar 31 2026
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.05
Height: 1.40 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
The origins and influence of Jim, Mark Twain's beloved yet polarizing literary figure

Astute. . . . Sheds new light on a much-studied character.--Publishers Weekly

Mark Twain's Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self-aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the first fully drawn Black fathers in American fiction. Haunted by the family he has left behind, Jim acts as father figure to Huck, the white boy who is his companion as they raft the Mississippi toward freedom. Jim is also a highly polarizing figure: he is viewed as an emblem both of Twain's alleged racism and of his opposition to racism; a diminished character inflected by minstrelsy and a powerful challenge to minstrel stereotypes; a reason for banning Huckleberry Finn and a reason for teaching it; an embarrassment and a source of pride for Black readers.

Eminent Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin probes these controversies, exploring who Jim was, how Twain portrayed him, and how the world has responded to him. Fishkin also follows Jim's many afterlives: in film, from Hollywood to the Soviet Union; in translation around the world; and in American high school classrooms today. The result is Jim as we have never seen him before--a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most memorable Black characters in American fiction.

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