No Such Thing as a Slave

No Such Thing as a Slave

"Better than Percival Everett's Pulizer Prize winning James," No Such Thing as a Slave is an afro-futurist revisioning of American slavery. An edgy and action-packed novel in verse telling the story of Jim, Mark Twain's fictional "runaway slave", by remaking him into a bold, self-liberated Black man, No Such Thing uplifts the full humanity of the enslaved. From Jim’s impulse to kill to protect his freedom against betrayal, to thoughts of rescuing his family to the Black nation of Haiti, to his final act of taking the first name of his poor White helper, Huckleberry, to root his new legacy, Jim owns himself. Jim longs for his wife, pines for his children, contemplates the nature of a God that would allow slavery, and calls out the superstition at the center of White supremacy. Jim tells his own story with the blues-infused lyricism of a poet and the fierce truth-telling of a revolutionary. Featuring true historical facts of American Slavery, No Such Thing as a Slave frees Jim from Twain's imagination, and the man is reborn as a true story of human resiliency and resourcefulness come to bring the possibility of America's reconciliation with its history.