Not Quite Ready for James

A Veteran Educator’s View on Teaching Percival Everett’s Bold Novel in High School

I just finished listening to it and let me say this up front: James is a brilliant story. It’s searing, subversive, and undeniably important. But after 25 years in California’s public education system—wearing every hat from teacher to administrator—I’ve earned the right to say something that might sound a little curmudgeonly: Most high school students aren’t ready for it.

Now, thirty years ago, I might’ve felt differently. I was idealistic, fresh out of grad school, still clinging to the fantasy that a well-chosen novel could single-handedly spark the kind of transformative, consciousness-expanding conversation that would make Paulo Freire proud. But years in the field have a way of sanding off the edges of your optimism, and these days I find myself thinking less about literary merit and more about pacing guides, cognitive readiness, and what students can actually do with a text.

And when it comes to James, I’m not convinced the average high schooler is ready to wrestle with it.

Yes, It’s Brilliant. That’s Part of the Problem.

Everett’s James is more than just a retelling of Huckleberry Finn. It’s a philosophical indictment of American mythology. It’s a linguistic commentary, a metafictional sleight of hand, a postmodern wink wrapped in a scathing social critique. James, the character, is not the naïve, broken-English sidekick that Twain gave us. He’s literate, sardonic, and painfully aware of the theater of white ignorance he must perform in order to survive.

That, right there, is the crux of the novel’s power—and its pedagogical difficulty.

To truly appreciate what Everett is doing, students must understand not only Twain’s Huck Finn but also the long arc of African American literary resistance, the mechanics of irony, the nature of performative speech, the psychology of slavery, and the subtleties of American racial ideology. They must read slowly, infer deeply, and resist the instinct to flatten the text into a feel-good morality tale about “freedom.” In other words, they have to read like grown-ups.

And that, in my experience, is asking a lot.

The Myth of Maturity in the Junior Year

I’ve watched too many classrooms descend into chaos the minute a racial slur appears on the page. Too many earnest discussions derailed by performative discomfort. Too many students (and a few adults, let’s be honest) unable to distinguish between what a character says and what the author intends. James doesn’t handhold through its themes. It demands that readers sit with discomfort, ambiguity, and contradiction—and recognize satire without being explicitly told this is satire. It requires a reader who can grasp subtext. And let's face it: most high schoolers are still learning to write a coherent thesis.

There’s also a strange irony here. Some of the same people who protest Huck Finn because of its outdated racial language are now championing James, seemingly unaware that Everett’s novel not only contains the same language but uses it with even more pointed and confrontational intent. It’s not just historically accurate; it’s philosophically loaded. And while teachers can, and often do, build incredible scaffolds around this kind of work, we can’t wish away the developmental gap that often exists between a student’s reading level and their interpretive maturity.

College Course in a High School Classroom

Don’t get me wrong—I love that we’re pushing boundaries in the curriculum. I support culturally relevant literature. I’ve fought for it. But James feels like the kind of novel that belongs in a college seminar room, not a 10th grade English class where the bell rings every 48 minutes and half the students forgot to bring their books.

In the right hands, at the right time, James is revelatory. But outside of advanced placement classrooms with highly trained instructors and students ready to engage at a metacognitive level, I worry it becomes another misunderstood book on a growing pile of performative righteousness.

Worse, I worry it becomes weaponized—either by those who claim it’s too “divisive” to be taught at all, or by those who assign it as a badge of progressive credibility without giving students the tools to understand it. Neither outcome honors the book or its message.

Let the Kids Grow Up First

So here’s my take, as someone who has spent a quarter century in this system: James should be taught. But not in high school—not yet. Let students encounter it when they’ve read more widely, when they’ve seen the world a bit, when they’ve learned how to hold two opposing ideas in their heads without collapsing into certainty. Let them come to it when they’re ready to see how deep the rabbit hole of American literature goes.

Until then, let’s not confuse intellectual precocity with maturity. Just because a student can read a book doesn’t mean they can wrestle with it. And James deserves wrestling, not recitation.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of room in the curriculum for stories that challenge students without overwhelming them—books that open doors without expecting them to walk all the way through before they’re ready.

Because some truths take time. And some books are worth waiting for.