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Especially in academia, controversy rages over the merits or evils of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in particular its portrayal of Jim, the runaway slave. Opponents disrupt classes and carry picket signs, objecting with strong emotion that Jim is fit model for African-American youth of today. In continuing outcries they claim that he and the dark period of American history he portrays are best forgotten. That time has gone, Jim's opponents charge. This is a new day. But is it? Dare we forget? The author of The Jim Dilemma argues that Twain's vel, in the tradition of all great literature, is invaluable for transporting readers to a time, place, and conflict essential to understanding who we are today. Without this work, she argues, there would be a hole in American history and a blank page in the history of African-Americans. To avoid this work in the classroom is to miss the opportunity to remember. Few other popular books have been so much attacked, vilified, or censored. Yet Ernest Hemingway proclaimed Twain's classic to be the beginning of American literature, and Langston Hughes judged it as the only nineteenth-century work by a white author who fully and realistically depicts an unlettered slave clinging to the hope of freedom. A teacher herself, the author challenges opponents to read the vel closely. She shows how Twain has t created ather Uncle Tom but rather a worthy man of integrity and self-reliance. Jim, along with other black characters in the book, demands a rethinking and a re-envisioning of the southern slave, for Huckleberry Finn, she contends, ultimately questions readers' tions of what freedom means and what it costs. As she shows that Twain portrayed Jim as body's fool, she focuses her discussion on both sides of the Jim dilemma and unflinchingly defends the importance of keeping the book in the classroom. Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua is director of the American studies program at Dallas Institute for the Humanities.

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity Press of Mississippi

ISBN-101578060613

ISBN-139781578060610

eBay Product ID (ePID)189592031

Product Key Features

Book TitleJim Dilemma : Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn

Number of Pages278 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1998

GenreLiterary Criticism, Social Science

AuthorJocelyn A. Chadwick

FormatPaperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight9.3 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.6 in

Height229mm

Width152mm

Weight272g

Additional Product Features

SubjectFiction Companions

Intended AudienceTrade

Date of Publication30/01/1998

Place of PublicationJackson

Spine13mm

Country of PublicationUnited States

ImprintUniversity Press of Mississippi

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The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn by Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua (Paperback, 1998)