Toni Morrison and Twain's Quartet

I came to Toni Morrison through Professor Paul Fry’s online literary theory course, my attempt to renew my studies after a long absence. I was listening to his lecture on "African American Criticism" while cooking dinner (not recommended) and before doing the companion reading, and thought I heard him say something about "the reason Twain can't free Jim is ..." and thought - "wait - didn't Miss Watson die?" So I re-read Huck Finn, read Morrison's essay "Playing in the Dark," read Puddinhead Wilson, stumbled on Percival Everett's James while looking on Amazon for something else, and then found Shelley Fisher Fishkin's Jim, then read Morrison's "Introduction to Huckleberry Finn" (written several years after "Playing in the Dark." The resulting essay is my attempt to make sense of it all. Read the full text (pdf, 8430 words).