“… The story won’t tell itself, you have to tell it, because if you don’t … someone else will tell it and make it theirs.” This line, waiting patiently in the back half of David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s Big Jim and the White Boy, is at the root of this recontextualizing of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This new middle grade graphic keeps the least understandable, but most endearing parts of Twain’s Finn (mainly Jim and Huck’s relationship and seemingly unexplainable devotion they have to each other) and gives them depth and meaning by putting Jim in control of his own story. He is not blindly and ignorantly following a child down the Mississippi after an attempted murder as he does in the original tale; he is Huck’s de facto caregiver and a loving, positive adult presence as the two flee Huck’s abusive father. That is where the similarities to Twain largely end. While still set against the same cruel, racist world of Twain’s story, the refocusing of the story through Jim’s lens makes it harder to dismiss that cruelty as “of its time.” Walker’s characters are not out for adventure, but searching for Jim’s family who have been sold while the titled characters were hired on for work. Along the way, their paths cross with real historical figures like John Brown and Thomas Livingstone. Walker and Anderson take Twain’s story and look at all the other narratives that were ignored to focus on a young white boy’s adventure and, in doing so, makes the all characters—including Huck—so much more real and interesting.
As the primary narrator, Jim knows how to navigate a world where an enslaved black man needs to fight for every ounce of space he occupies. While in his youth, Jim knows how to play the part expected from him by the racists and enslavers surrounding him on a daily basis, Walker also shows him as an older man who knows the power of his voice and story. As that graphic moves through time and narrators, illustrator Anderson and colorist Isabell Struble use subtle changes in style and art to drive the importance of perspective in storytelling. There is a gentleness to their art that further contrasts the harshness of the story in a truly beautiful way.
This new middle grade and up graphic does not shy away from the brutal world of the Antebellum South or even of the original Twain work. The n-slur is depicted frequently with thick, black lines running through each instance, simultaneously blurring the word and highlighting it. Walker explains its incorporation in an author’s note as endemic to the harsh historical reality of the book, but even with that it is jarring to see and further drives the sense of danger in those moments of the plot.
With debates still raging over the inclusion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on school reading lists, Big Jim and the White Boy offers a beautiful new perspective, placing the excitement and adventure of the original into a world that feels more true and authentic, a world that is cruel and beautiful but ultimately driven by love.
Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined
By David F. Walker
Art by Marcus Kwame Anderson, Isabell Struble
Ten Speed Graphics, 2024
ISBN: 9780593836118
Publisher Age Rating: ages 13-17
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Older Teen (16-18)
