My Jim

My Jim by Nancy Rawles Crown Publishers, January 2005 $19.95, ISBN 1-400-05400-1

Nancy Rawles has made a name for herself on the stage and on the page. Her previous works, in addition to several plays, include two novels: her award-winning debut, Love Like Gumbo (Fjord Press, 1997), and Crawfish Dreams (Doubleday, 2003). Her latest project, My Jim, is a pre-Emancipation tale that evokes the poignancy of a slave narrative.

Young Marianne Libre, the granddaughter of former slave Sadie Watson, is on the verge of marriage to a good man, but she's afraid. She's unsure about love and even more afraid of leaving her elderly grandmother alone. What she'll learn is that Sadie is a woman who has experienced a worse fate than loneliness, but she is also a woman who has truly known love. Sadie's story, though fictitious, represents what was all too real for most enslaved Africans--the loss of innocence, children, spouse, dignity, possessions.... Yet, as she suffers through her many trials, she never loses hope that she will be reunited with the only man who ever loved her unconditionally: her Jim. (The character is based on the same Jim who ran off down the Mississippi with Twain's Huckleberry Finn.)

Rawles gives readers a bird's-eye view of true plantation life as we follow Sadie through several masters, a number of states and at least three companions--but only one love. We see how Sadie manages to carry on the traditions of her ancestors, such as healing the sick using herbs and roots from the woods. We also see the incomprehensible vulnerability of slave women--to their masters, to male slaves and to other men. Finally, as the day of Emancipation dawns, the real test for these former slaves will be to free their minds. While some concentration may be required initially to navigate through the slave dialect used, the industrious reader will find that it is well worth it in the end.

Regina Cash-Clark is an assistant professor of journalism at Ramapo College of New Jersey and a freelance writer/editor.

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group