Trauma, Race, and Resilience: A Study of Percival Everett’s James

Abstract

This paper examines Percival Everett’s James (2024) by drawing on Sheldon George’s work on trauma and race, especially his reworking of the Lacanian psychoanalytic notion of “Jouissance” and Toni Morrison’s ideas on whiteness and the literary imagination. I argue that Everett’s novel moves beyond traditional representations of trauma and race by displacing the central figure of the original classic. In the process, the novel engages with those traumatic experiences that were previously marginalised. In addition, James’s engagement with the ordinary and the banal, alongside his acts of care, become the means through which his resilience and strength emerge. Hence, James not only reverses the order of things in his reimagined tale but also changes the vantage point in favour of the ordinary yet transformative acts through which racial and traumatic experiences are negotiated.