Reviews
Kirkus Reviews: A powerful work of historical scholarship that brings to life one of American fiction’s most complex creations.. …Jim is someone we have made our own: We project our fears, our sentiments, our fantasies on him. Here, Fishkin restores life to the character. She argues that Twain wished to create a figure of creative power—of imagination, bravery, and eloquence—and dramatize the net slavery cast over him…Fishkin has a fine ear for comedy in Twain, and great insight into dialect In scene after scene, Fishkin shows how Jim is “more active, smart, and assertive than he is often given credit for.”…
Publishers Weekly: "Astute. . . . Sheds new light on a much-studied character.” ..”Pushing back against criticisms that Jim is a minstrel stereotype, Fishkin notes that Twain viewed minstrel shows as unrealistic and avoided several minstrelsy conventions (e.g., replacing the “final f or v sound in words like of or give or have with b”) in his effort to more accurately represent “Missouri Negro dialect.”...The chronicle of Jim’s stage and screen portrayals fascinates (both the 1936 and 1973 Soviet film adaptations of Huck Finn “use the novel... to criticize America and to champion socialist ideals of interracial proletarian solidarity)”....
The Arts Fuse: Book Review: “Jim” — An Inspiring Homage to Huckleberry Finn’s Black Comrade “[Fishkin] sees Jim as a worthy role model in a story full of fools, crooks, swindlers, drunks, murderers and, of course, racists. . . . Various writers and critics have made that case, but perhaps nobody has made it so energetically and thoroughly as Fishkin….In a chapter titled “Jim’s Version,” [Fishkin] provides a long account of the events in Huckleberry Finn in Jim’s voice, in part to present and celebrate the virtues of that voice, and in part to emphasize the importance of the fact that we see everything that happens in the novel only through Huck’s eyes. Twain, who discussed in a preface to Huckleberry Finn how much he’d taken care to produce accurately the dialects of various characters in the novel, would have been pleased….[An] important and thoughtful book…”
Florida Courier: Author provides a touching homage to Huckleberry Finn’s Black friend …”Critics have succeeded in making Huckleberry Finn one of the most frequently banned books in the United States. In Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade, Shelley Fisher Fishkin—a professor of Humanities at Stanford University and the author of many books—provides an informative and compelling assessment of these controversies…The fog scene, in which Jim upbraids Huck for playing a cruel trick on him and elicits an apology, Fishkin points out, is a rare moment in 19th century American fiction in which an enslaved Black man teaches a white person to treat others with respect….”
Foreword Review: Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade “A compendium about Huckleberry Finn’s Jim, this literary history seeks to cement the novel as a resounding social critique. ... [T]he middle chapter, which is formatted as a creative retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view, is a virtuoso performance that seamlessly inhabits Jim’s dialect.”
The New Yorker: The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain… “Two recent books lift Jim out of Twain’s frame as a nimble intellect in disguise: “James,” by the novelist Percival Everett, and “Jim,” by the literary scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin. These authors don’t send Twain up; they send him soaring….”
sightings
The New York Times Book Review… Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade mentioned in The New York Times Book Review Quiz, “How Well Do You Know the Life and Works of Mark Twain?” (if you answer question #4 correctly, you will see mention of Jim, along with Percival Everett's James.)
The Washington Post…Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade mentioned in The Washington Post, What We Get Wrong about Mark Twain. “More than ever, Twain continues to be a touchstone for American writers — witness Percival Everett’s “James,” this year’s Pulitzer winner for fiction. The Library of America even publishes “The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Works” edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. In Fishkin’s own recent book, ‘Jim,’ this eminent scholar surveys how Huck Finn’s comrade has been interpreted through the years by academics, filmmakers, and novelists such as Everett.”
Medium…Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade appears on Medium’s list of “The 12 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 that I’m Excited To Read, part II”
The Book Haven… “Huckleberry Finn, Jim, and the ‘Lie of Silent Assertion’. — Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade featured in The Book Haven…