Keywords
Percival Everett, Blue Humanities, Hydro-raciality, Liquid Archive, Mark Twain.
Abstract
This research paper drafts an interdisciplinary hydro-racial analysis of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 2025, James by Percival Everett. As a reimagined fiction of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Everett’s text places Jim, also known as James at the centre of the narrative. Through a Black perspectival lens, the study highlights the Mississippi River as a primary catalyst that underscores James’s journey from property to protagonist. It elucidates how the course of the story of James receives new dimensions only when it comes in contact with the river. The paper also describes James’s life as a constant contestation between the land and the water where the former compels him to mask his intelligence under the disguise of slavery but the latter empowers him to embrace his true identity. It further explains the reciprocal relationship between James and the Mississippi River. Finally, the article demonstrates the river’s role in the preservation of a liquid archive of James’s agency and history.
