Huck and Jim

[jlh]

Introduction to the NewSouth edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry FinnFantastic reading. If all you've seen of the current controversy is "they're taking out the n-word!" and/or sarcastic comments on Twitter, I urge you to read the introduction. (Particularly because they aren't just removing the word, but replacing it with "

Comments

[ceares]

see, I think we are far enough from it to a certain extent that it becomes like the boogey man. We're only what, 25 yrs from the start of the Aids crisis and because it is or can be manageable, youngsters coming up on it from the back end don't look at it the same way.

I don't necessarily say it's the books job to teach about that moment in history but I think that it can be a valuable tool for that. We learned about slavery in school, true and I got that it was horrible, but there was no real connection to it or sense of what it could have been like for me until I saw Roots because suddenly it wasn't facts, it was a character I cared about and was invested in. (And I am only 4 generations removed from slavery)

Stories like the Diary of Anne Frank, or the Grapes of Wrath do the same thing. We read those books or saw those movies in my history classes as an addendum to what we were studying. If anything to me it's more important for kids just because they are so self involved to a certain extent that it's hard for them to conceptualize something that can seem very abstract.

I'm from a large, racially diverse city but I've known people from small towns that actually don't really know people of different races. Seen them, met them maybe in passing, but don't actually *know* anybody.

I like Twain and I don't want people to miss out on him because of certain words and banned books in general piss me off, because beyond the censorship issue, I think we should be discombobulated and made uncomfortable sometimes.

*sigh* I know there's no perfect answer for this. And part of it I guess it that it feels to a certain extent like giving in. I just want people to be smarter. You'd think after 42 years I'd realize that's not going to happen.