Acclaimed American writer Percival Everett is best known for his sharp satirical takes on race and American culture.
His latest novel, James, is a reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the enslaved character Jim. It earned him this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Author of the Year award at the British Book Awards.
Just last year, his novel Erasure was adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction, a biting satire about a frustrated Black author who pens a wildly stereotypical novel about inner-city life as a joke, only to see it become a runaway success. The film calls out the publishing industry’s racial biases and questions the tendency to limit Black storytelling to trauma and poverty narratives.
He is also a literature professor at the University of Southern California – one of many academic institutions facing major budget cuts from the Trump administration.
We asked him if the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should still be taught and whether ‘James’ should be taught alongside it.
