When the themes and text of her book proved challenging for an audiobook publisher to find a narrator, author Shelley Fisher Fishkin took on producing the book herself.

By Shelley Fisher Fishkin

“Let me know when the audiobook comes out,” my doctor said at my last checkup. “That’s the way I get to ‘read’ these days—during my commute.”

I hadn’t planned to produce an audiobook myself of my new book, Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade, published this year by Yale University Press in their Black Lives book series. The book delves into the complex and, at times, controversial character of Jim from Mark Twain’s classic novel.

I was pleased to have the audio version licensed to Yale’s audiobook partner—as long as they found a Black narrator prepared to deal with the Black dialect that figures so prominently in the book, including an experimental seventy-page section in which I rewrote the story through the eyes of its leading Black character, in the voice and dialect Twain gave him.

When the author becomes the producer

It turned out, however, that the audiobook publisher struck out when they tried to find an actor to narrate the book. The Black actors they approached said they would be embarrassed to read all that “slave dialect,” a response that frustrated me enormously.

I wrote the book to give Jim the respect he deserves but is often denied. I argue that Jim—one of the first Black fathers in American literature—is the book’s hero: an enslaved man seeking his freedom and that of his family in a world determined to keep them enslaved. Jim is astute, self-aware, sensitive, generous, and caring. Twain admired him and wanted readers to admire him as well. The idea that anyone should be embarrassed by the carefully crafted Black voice Twain gave Jim struck me as misguided.

At the same time, I wanted my doctor to be able to listen to my book—and others as well, including an elderly artist friend with macular degeneration. So I asked for the rights back and decided to produce the audiobook myself.

Choosing a platform and casting a narrator

Through Audible’s ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) platform, I was able to look for Black male actors from the U.S. (a British accent would not work), ideally someone with experience narrating serious nonfiction and enough range to handle the four major voices in my book: Huck’s voice, Jim’s voice, my voice, and Mark Twain’s voice.

I listened to scores of samples and sent a message to my top choices describing the project and the demands of the role.

The first actor I heard back from ultimately decided he did not want to do a project that required voicing an offensive racial epithet (the “n-word”) as often as this one would, where the word appears in quotations from Twain’s novel, in early reviews and later critical commentary, and in snippets of nineteenth-century popular culture that form part of the historical conversation the book enters.  I had begun the book with an note that explained that  I included  the offensive epithet in my text out of respect for  the “painstaking” care  with which Twain sought to represent his characters’ speech with accuracy; I also noted that Twain was well aware by 1885 of how toxic the word was—indeed he had  made this word central to an anti-lynching satire he published in 1869 in which the “honorable” men of Memphis used the word to justify their having lynched an innocent man.   Given the pain the word inflicts I believe there is no need for students to ever read it aloud  or say it in the classroom. But excising the word from the text dishonors the author and the history of racial oppression  at the book’s core. The word is offensive. So, too, are slavery and racism. Twain used the word in his writing for the same reason I do not say it: we both understand its destructive force. But only if readers, teachers, and citizens confront the word and the racist world view that undergirds it might the racist attitudes it embodies and empowers be relegated to the past,  paving the way to a future in which the word has no place.

Fate must have intervened because the second narrator I heard from turned out to be perfect. He understood why the word needed to be retained, and appreciated the book as a powerful satire not only of racism, but of the ability of people who think of themselves as religious and good to sustain a barbarous status quo.

Collaboration and editorial decision-making

Alvin Richardson’s prior experience had been mainly in producing musical recordings rather than audiobooks; his work in gospel music had earned him two Dove Award nominations, two Stellar Award nominations, and a Grammy nomination. His deeply resonant bass voice, combined with his background in theatre, his experience growing up in Baltimore and now living in Texas, his long engagement with racial reconciliation initiatives,  and his enthusiasm for the project, made him an ideal collaborator.

We discussed how historically accurate language functions in the book and how—rather than being an emblem of Twain’s racism, as some mistakenly believe—it is central to his critique of racism. Twain understood that to satirize racists convincingly, he had to portray them realistically. Richardson was comfortable voicing my commentary, quotations from Twain and other critics, and the dialects of the various characters, particularly Jim.

He also understood that quotations from minstrel shows—what I refer to in the book as “minstrelese”—were key to contrasting Twain’s deployment of Black dialect with the artificial, racist language of those performances. He was game to follow my lead on pronouncing titles and quotations in foreign languages. These conversations were part of an intentional editorial process rather than an afterthought, and they shaped how the audiobook was ultimately performed.

Editing for the ear

It felt like my birthday every time a draft recording of a new chapter appeared in my inbox. I spent hours listening closely to each chapter to make sure the pauses and cadences were right and that foreign words were pronounced correctly.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy Richardson found it to make corrections in his narration. The project came together much more quickly than I had expected, taking about two months in total. It was thrilling to hear him bring to life my experiment in retelling the story through Jim’s eyes, in Jim’s voice.

Alongside his creative work, Richardson frequently collaborates with churches and community organizations to further communication across racial lines and mutual understanding. He told me that our collaboration uniquely blended his artistic expertise with his passion for bridging cultures. I could not have asked for a better partner.

Looking ahead

A Black student in one of  my classes said she found Richardson’s portrayal of Jim “very authentic and real.” Many others had the same reaction, saying that Richardson really made my book come alive in powerful ways.

The experience of collaborating with Richardson on the audiobook of Jim was so positive that we are now planning a second project: co-producing an audiobook of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn itself. This time, I am paying closer attention to format and distribution so the audiobook can be more readily used by schools and libraries—something I did not fully research the first time around.

ACX offers “exclusive” and “non-exclusive” models.  Giving Audible and Amazon “exclusive” distribution rights seemed like the easiest option, since I had no clue about other entities I might want to distribute the audiobook. But I hadn’t realized that the “exclusive” model allowed only for sale to individuals, and not to libraries or educational institutions. I am now in the process of changing the distribution to “non-exclusive.” The royalty rate is lower, which is fine, but the “non-exclusive” option would allow platforms to which schools and libraries have access to easily get the book—platforms such as Libby, Hoopla, Authors Republic, Voices by INaudio, Sora, Spotify, or ePlatform—while individuals would still have access via Audible and Amazon. I will make sure to select the “non-exclusive” distribution model for the new audiobook we’ll produce this summer.

I can imagine teachers welcoming the chance to have Twain’s Jim come alive in their classrooms through Richardson’s rich, deep voice, restoring dignity, depth, and humanity to one of the most significant Black characters in the American canon.

Producing this audiobook feels especially urgent now. Debates around teaching Huckleberry Finn continue in classrooms and school boards nationwide during a year of historically high book bans. Jim’s story, long marginalized, resonates with contemporary conversations about race, representation, and American identity. Huckleberry Finn evokes both the boldness of founding a nation on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the hypocrisy that allowed those ideals to be violated so fully from the start. As America prepares to celebrate its 250^th birthday, I hope this audiobook can help listeners reflect on who we are as a nation, what we have been, and what we might become.

 

Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, professor of English, and professor (by courtesy) of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. She is the author or editor of many books, including Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade; Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee; and Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices, and is the editor of the twenty-nine-volume Oxford Mark Twain. She lives in Stanford, CA.