Author of the Award-Winning Novel My Jim
Nancy Rawles has worked as a novelist and playwright in Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles. She has received many awards for her writing including an Alex Award from the American Library Association, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and a Legacy Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. The New York Times called her novel My Jim “as heart-wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature.”
My Jim is a response to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Published twenty years ago, My Jim is the story of Rawles’ original character Sadie, the wife of Twain’s famous enslaved character who leaves her bereft when he escapes down the Mississippi River with a boy named Huck. It is an intimate story told in the voice of a remarkable woman who works as a healer but is helpless to protect her children. It is the story of people who did not escape.
For many years, Nancy taught writing to students of all ages for Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program as well as other organizations. She has taught American Cultural Studies as far away as Miyagi Hirose High School in Sendai, Japan and Kaziemierz Pulaski University in Radom, Poland. In her travels, she has found that African American history resonates with people in many different countries. Most recently, she taught History at Lakeside School in Seattle.
BOOKS BY NANCY RAWLES
"Chaz Freeman ask me to marry him. Take me by the hand. Take me in his arms. Lift me on his horse and jump up right behind me.”
My Jim
“He had been dead for eight years and she had been alone for three. Those three had been marked by conspicuous and frantic culinary activity.”
Crawfish Dreams
“Mourning was what the Broussards did best. On any given day, family members of every age and ability could be found engaged in this soulful activity.”
Love Like Gumbo
The Art of My Jim
Venise Jones-Poole and Stephen Michael Newby prepare to record a song for the My Jim CD at the Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle. https://www.jackstraw.org/
My experience of writing My Jim was enriched by a project that invited artists to create work inspired by passages from the book. Singers, musicians, composers, sculptors, printmakers, fabric artists, and actors brought the book to life in ways I never could have imagined. The My Jim Project was funded by the Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, and the Jack Straw Cultural Center, which provided a studio and engineer for recording the music. It was exciting for me to work with other artists. They turned what had been a difficult journey as a writer into a joyful experience of art and community.
Nancy Rawles
My Jim was selected by the Seattle Public Library Center for the Book as part of its popular “one city, one book” program Seattle Reads.
https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/authors-and-books/seattle-reads/seattle-reads-past-years
Justin Emeka and Timeca Briggs read from My Jim in a performance directed by Valerie Curtis Newton as part of the Hansberry Project at ACT Theater in Seattle http://www.valeriecurtisnewton.com/the-hansberry-project.html
Monica Spooner-Jordan, model for a sculpture of Sadie, the main character in My Jim
Detail of Sadie sculpture by Maureen O'Neill
Sadie's Quilt by Tina Hoggatt, Nancy Gibson, Ann and Cynthia Millium
Embrace by Tina Hoggatt