My Jim

In MY JIM, as Sadie, a former slave, and her granddaughter, Marianne, piece together a quilt, Sadie pieces together her own story, gradually revealing the history of the items she has kept for years in a canning jar: a small knife, a piece of felt, the bottom of a clay bowl, a child's tooth, a shiny gold button, and a corn pipe thick with tar. The contents of the jar represent a lifetime of misery, pain, heartache, and survival. "I gives you my first heart Marianne. The heart I gots for my mama. And the heart I gots for my Jim." In those few words, Rawles lets the main character, Sadie, tell us her stark truth: To survive a brutal life that would drive some to suicide or madness, Sadie has allowed few people into her "first heart." Living as a slave, Sadie learns quickly that friends, family, even your own children, can be wrenched from you with no warning. But Jim enters a young Sadie's "first heart" on the day he is born and lives in it always; his love for her, her love for him, and the hope of his return carry Sadie through years of soul-deadening losses. Rawles writes simply, relating the most gut-wrenching scenes with control and reserve, with a matter-of-factness that serves to underscore the fact that Sadie's losses were not uncommon but rather a fact of life for a person in bondage. As I read MY JIM, I wondered about the other Sadies and Jims that walked this earth, knowing that this story isn't the story of one but of many. I finished the book with tears forming, a weight on my chest, and admiration for the writing of Nancy Rawles. She has produced a work of art.

What a fantastic idea...Rawles takes us to the mid-1800s and shows us the world through the eyes of a young slave woman who happens to be the one true love of "Jim," the character made famous through Mark Twain's classic, "Huckleberry Finn." Twain's fiction introduced me to subjects of slavery and prejudice and friendship. Rawles' story takes us much deeper into the same areas. "My Jim" is sparse, yet powerful. The writing is raw, yet beautiful. Nancy Rawles pens a story that sounds as convincing as any I've encountered. When I read "The Bondwoman's Narrative" a few years back, I expected a tale with this sort of impact. Rawles uses subtle symbolism, brevity of words, and universal themes to remind us of the horrors of slavery--whether it be mental, physical, or emotional. She weaves in the elements of Jim's story without waying down Sadie's. Love and hope are given moments to sparkle amidst the abuse and suffering of Sadie's life. Sadie, serving as narrator throughout most of the book, proves that she has stayed strong and true, passing on this hope to a fearful granddaughter. With this short but masterful novel, Rawles does her part to continue the circle of learning.

Nancy Rawles exercises a deft and delicate touch in weaving this novel of Sadie, a slave who loved the character Jim from Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," as she reveals her life story to her freeborn granddaughter, Marianne Libre. The reader will be transported to the brutal life of the Old South as seen from the slaves' perspective, a life of tending cane and tobacco, of working from dawn to dusk, of being subjected to the whims and lusts of "Mas". Written in dialect, with the present-tense verbs often lacking the ending "s", the rich texture of this novel is authentic and evocative. Rawles' writing is succinct, raw, and original. Highly recommended.

What higher compliment can we pay an author in that their characters become real to us and take us places we've never been. In this case, hard places full of despair. Rawles drew on extensive reading of slave narratives to create "My Jim." The dialect the story's written in makes reading difficult for the first few pages, but it is possible to begin to comprehend what's happening. Then, you're lost. The central character in this story is Sadie, the wife of escaped slave Jim from Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." Sadie tells her story to her grand-daughter as she prepares a quilt for the girl to take with her when she moves West. "Ain't nothing on this place belongs to you," Sadie's Master tells her when he takes Sadie's daughter, Lizbeth to be his kitchen maid and sex slave. "My Jim" is full of harsh truths, and tells more of the times than Twain's tale. I strongly recommend this book for teachers, students of Black History. You can proudly sit it on your shelf next to Twain's work. I do believe "My Jim" will be just as enduring.

My Jim is an imaginative take on the fictional Jim of Huckleberry Finn lore. Nancy Rawles, a writer and history teacher, took issue with the way the highly controversial book by Mark Twain was portrayed in the schools in Seattle, her adopted town. She began researching which included a trip to Hannibal, Missouri where Hick Finn takes place and years of reviewing slave narratives and the slavery culture. Rawles constructed her story around a passage in Huck Finn that expressed Jim's desire for freedom for himself and his family. Taking literary license, she tells the story through the eyes of Jim's wife, Sadie, as she relays her memories of the man she loved to her granddaughter who is contemplating marriage as they piece a quilt over a twelve-day period. Sadie was at the birth of Jim, toting water for the midwife. She was barely high as a barrel but the life of a slave child was so that they began toiling from the time they were able to grasp a cup. Sadie and Jim lived on Mas Watson's plantation in Missouri. Sadie watched Jim grow as she also watched the people she loved leave her either through death or by being sold away never to be seen again. In rich details the hard life of back-breaking labor and the beatings endured by the slaves is meticulously told. Slaves were no more than cattle, scratching for food just to survive and for mating and producing more slaves for the master. The most ragged of apparel was hard to come by to keep themselves clothed and they had to condition themselves not show pain when their children were sold away from them. Reading a book about slavery can be a drain mentally but Rawles' language was fluid and luminous, so much so, I felt like I was walking through the woods gathering the leaves from the sassafras trees and plant roots from which Sadie made her "cures". I could hear the cadence of the many tongues of the slaves who came from different points of the African continent to the plantation in New Roads, Louisiana where Sadie was sold later on in her life. Though written in dialect without contractions and no punctuation other than the period, it was surprisingly readable for this reviewer. The references to the culture of Africa were highlighted throughout the book such as the dance rituals and belief systems of Sadie and the other slaves that were held in their souls. I met Rawles last year when she came to Oakland for her signing of Crawfish Dreams and as she talked about this new release, she conveyed a sincerity of what she was trying to accomplish with this book. She took artistic allowance as she gave voice to Jim as more than the savior and companion to Huck Finn, but a man of flesh and blood who had hopes and dreams of seeking the elusive quest of freedom and to love and care for his family as a man. This was a love story of Sadie and Jim who promised to love each other always, a testament to those who could be beat down but not broken despite not knowing when they would be torn from the one they l