Dramatic Reading from Nancy Rawles' 'My Jim'

In honor of Black History Month, CLU presents a dramatic reading from My Jim, the latest work by award-winning novelist Nancy Rawles. The reading by theatre arts students Renau Rush and Natalie Turner will be followed by a discussion with the author.

Rawles will sign copies of My Jim, Crawfish Dreams, and Love Like Gumbo Friday at 2:45 p.m. in Pearson Library.

Rawles is the author of three award-winning novels. Her latest tells the story of the wife and children of Mark Twain’s famous slave character from the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Rawles spent months researching the personal histories of slaves and reading oral histories before writing My Jim.

In her New York Times review, Helen Schulman called My Jim “as heart wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature." My Jim is the winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Legacy Award for Fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

Rawles grew up in Los Angeles, and her first two books Love Like Gumbo and Crawfish Dreams are set in the City of Angels. They tackle issues of race, class, color and sexual identity.