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Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure�T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "n****r."
Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don't read." Rather than see Twain's most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."
This has been a controversial topic lately, so I'm wondering what people here think of it. To me, it's an attempt at censoring and rewriting history. (Ironic I'd be speaking of censoring when our own forum censors the word, but there you go). That's how people talked back then, period; changing the book won't change reality, but it will skew perceptions of how things were back then.
Who really wants this done? Are people actually complaining about this and asking for the change, or are institutions (like schools and libraries) just knee-jerking to avoid possible trouble in the future. I'd find it difficult to believe that even most black people are ok with it; books like this are a testament to how far civilization has come since then, at least in some places.|||I think it's ridiculous. The original was fine as it is/was.|||Original was fine, no need to sugar coat it.|||"If you look for offense, you're sure to find it."
The saying rings true here, and I find this change ridiculous. Sure, some kids may read the word and use it a few times. That's not a problem exclusive to this book, though, and there are nasty words to find elsewhere.|||Anyone who thinks Huck Finn offensive to black people doesn't understand Huck Finn.|||Next up: a version of Lolita where the main characters are adults engaging in consensual kissing on the cheeks.|||I'd be interested in seeing if anyone posting in this thread is black, whether American or otherwise.|||lol|||Quote:
Next up: a version of Lolita where the main characters are adults engaging in consensual kissing on the cheeks.
Wow...
As a teacher, one of your primary goals should be to put any book (or text, as you obviously can't read a lot of them in a term) you read with your students within a historical context. Then you have to ask, if the author seems to follow general consensus of thatt time, or if he/she wants to point out something special.
Huckleberry Finn can be a good example of that, so why the sugarcoating?
We can start censoring other classics too, like Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstockings)
PS:
I grew up when there there were certain sweets called "Negerk�sse" or "Mohrenkopf" (="negrokiss" or "negro head")
Today they are called "Schokokuss" (="chocolate kiss").
When I passed a box of those around in class and the childhood word of "Negerkuss" slipped passed my lips some students said: "That was racist!", I apologized, explained why I said it and the black student in my class, who chuckled all the time offered more kisses, when the box was empty. We all had to laugh.|||Quote:
PS:
I grew up when there there were certain sweets called "Negerk�sse" or "Mohrenkopf" (="negrokiss" or "negro head")
Today they are called "Schokokuss" (="chocolate kiss").
When I passed a box of those around in class and the childhood word of "Negerkuss" slipped passed my lips some students said: "That was racist!", I apologized, explained why I said it and the black student in my class, who chuckled all the time offered more kisses, when the box was empty. We all had to laugh.
Yeah, we have those too. In a lot of dialects, they are called "Negerinnentetten"...which is coniderably more wrong seeing how "Negerinnen" means "female negros" and "tetten" means "tits". Yeah...
Dit I mention we used to own the Congo and did some really bad stuff there?
Either way, I too think books should be viewed in their historical context and original publishing. Several Belgian comics from way back when not everything needed to be politically correct show very clearly what the mindset of the author/artist and several others from the same time period was. An easy, on topic example would be "Tintin in the Congo", which at the time was influenced by colonial views by the author, but has since been changed to appease anti-racist and animal protection groups for the images shown. An English release was actually held off until 2005 because apparently the British didn't like being reminded of their own colonial period, and this was for the already censored version.
Vandersteen, author of the Suske en\und Wiske/Spike and Suzy/Bob et Bobbette/Willy and Wanda (pick your language), and Sleen, author of Nero, voiced their opninion on the "Koningkwestie" (King's Affair) after WWII, a political conflict on whether King Leopold III would be allowed back on the throne after refusing to go into exile with the rest of the governement during the war. The matter litterally split the country in half and minor tidbits like these are all details which in the end add little to the story, but help understand the mindset of the people living in that day and age.
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