Percival Everett on giving Jim ‘control of his own story’

“Reading is perhaps the most subversive thing that we can do. No one is privy to what goes into us when we look at a text. So, someone can actually read over your shoulder, but they have no idea what the work is doing to you … This is why people who would oppress and would seek to control you were so afraid of literacy … Perhaps the second most subversive thing is actually writing. Providing a text that can be consumed by someone else that will lead to that subversive active of reading. So, Jim, in writing himself into being, is actually taking control of his own story so that he might relay it to someone else.” - Percival Everett