The Stowe Center for Literary Activism Announces 2025 Stowe Prize for Literary Activism
Percival Everett’s James First Work of Fiction to Win the Stowe Prize for Literary Activism
The Stowe Center for Literary Activism announces the 2025 Stowe Prize for Literary Activism.The winner is Percival Everett for James: A Novel (Doubleday, 2024).
This, the eleventh prize awarded, is the first work of fiction to win.
James is a reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told by James, known as “Jim” in Mark Twain’s 1885 novel. “But to call James a retelling would be an injustice,” writes Tyler Austin Harper in The Atlantic Magazine (April 2024). “Everett sends Mark Twain’s classic through the looking glass. …[James’s] realities lie in the details of life lived under conditions of unceasing brutality—the omnipresent whip, the daily interplay of dread and panic, the rage that can find no outlet.”
Everett offers a more truthful representation of an enslaved person, one free of many of the stereotypes cast upon Black people throughout the American literary canon—stereotypes that Harriet Beecher Stowe also perpetuated in her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
“The depiction of enslaved people is always that they are childlike, simple minded, incapable of second order thinking… even in Huck Finn, Jim is portrayed as childlike and incapable of even understanding practical jokes that are played on him,” said Everett in an interview with The Culture Show, April 2024. “Of course, no one is like that. Enslaved people aren’t like that.”
The Stowe Prize Selection Committee, comprised of educators and avid readers, found the book compelling, readable, vindicating, with a clear social justice message that reclaims agency, individuality, intelligence, and humanity for James.
Stowe Prize Selection Committee member Dr. Lucinda Canty championed James from the start. The Director of Lucinda’s House in Windsor, Connecticut, Canty is dedicated to creating environments where women of color feel safe, supported, and can become an active part in eliminating structural barriers to improve their overall health and wellbeing. She said of the novel: “Jamesrepresents storytelling at its finest—so exceptional that at times you forget Jamesis a work of fiction.” She added: “The narrative served as a means to understand the value of history, especially in defining one’s self. I can’t remember the last time I read anything that evoked such strong emotions of anger, fear, intrigue, hope, and love.”
Chair of the Stowe Center’s Board of Trustees and Chair of the Selection Committee, Dr. Michael Mallery said: “Reading James was a transformative experience for me. In an era where debates over historical narratives and representation intensify, Percival Everett’s James masterfully repositions Jim as an authoritative figure—imbued with depth, soul, and elegance. This compelling portrayal challenged me to confront uncomfortable truths and delve deeper into reexamining the stories we’ve been told, both contextually and historically.”
Particularly the selection committee, charged with finding a literary activist book with deep social justice consequence, focused on language and literacy as exemplified in this story as paths for freedom of the mind.
“Oppressed people in oppressive situations use language the same way we always use language — to communicate,” Everett said in a radio interview. “What they have to do is communicate in a way that doesn’t allow their oppressors to have access.”
Everett’s book is the eleventh Stowe Prize for Literary Activism. Legacy Sponsor The Hartford has provided support for this $10,000 prize since its inception. Past Stowe Prize winners are:
- Dr. Bettina Love, Punished for Dreaming: How Education Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal (St. Martin’s Press, 2023)
- Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want(Princeton University Press, 2022)
- Dr. Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America (Little, Brown, 2022)
- Dr. Eddie Glaude, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today (Crown, 2020)
- Albert Woodfox, Solitary (Grove Press, 2019)
- Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City(Crown, 2018)
- Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2017)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” (The Atlantic, 2014)
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2013)
- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Vintage, 2011)
The Stowe Prize for Literary Activism will be awarded to Percival Everett at a public ceremony in Hartford in September.
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