From Jim to James: Percival Everett’s contamination of a canonical American narrative

The article deals with the deconstruction of the American myth through the analysis of Percival Everett’s novel James . This text presents a strategy of contamination of Americanness through the rewriting of one of the core texts of American culture, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , from the perspective of Jim. By doing so, Everett’s novel provides a rewriting of the American South as a physical and metaphorical space: Everett deconstructs the nostalgic interpretation often attributed to Twain’s portrayal of the southern chronotope and reappropriates the African American national narrative by rewriting the most famous Black character in the American literary canon with a Black voice. By focusing on the themes of language, writing and storytelling in Everett’s novel, the article reflects on the process of contamination of the idea of Americanness through a prominent presence of the theme of the Other, in favour of a more complete and more critical understanding of the idea of America.