In the middle of “James”, Percival Everett’s retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective, James is forced to make horseshoes. James has never done this before, and another enslaved person, Easter, instructs him how to proceed. When James expresses frustration in the process, Easter says, “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning” (Everett, 153).

This passage struck a chord. I thought about how, in my day-to-day, I rarely experience the negative feelings of making a mistake. This is not because I am not prone to them, but rather that I tend to be risk-avoidant. As a survival tactic, that works well, but happiness in modern life is less about survival, and more about growth. I think that if I were less scared of feeling repercussions of a mistake, I would feel less stuck.

While this line as a standalone idea aligned to my personal emotional moment, the mistakes in the novel have incomparable consequences. A central theme of “James” is that intelligence is dangerous. Towards the beginning of the novel, James instructs his children on how to speak. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way”, he says, “and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them. The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior’” (Everett, 20). When Easter teaches James how to forge a horseshoe, he provides a safe space to make mistakes and learn. It is an act of subversion. Education is subversive. There is a long history of Americans dismantling education to preserve systems of power.

References: Everett, Percival. James. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2024.