I put this down once at the very first pages of blackface songs and slave dialect, unable to stomach another example, although others rushed to reassure me that if I kept going I'd find that the slaves were code-switching:  speaking dialect in front of their gullible, deluded masters and dropping it to lapse into plain speaking when whites disappeared.  Didn't help.  I just didn't want to read through it.  But upon multiple, repeated raves from people I trust I tried again and with a bit of a running start, I came to be glad I've read it.  James himself is a character study (even though I answered "no" his character flaws aren't a main focus -- but his growth is) worth learning from.