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

[junesrose]

Very interesting thought, and I'm seeing the controversy from a new perspective. You're right, if taking out the "n" word makes the books more accessible, then more power to them. So thanks for sharing this.

[zorb]

Thanks for the link. That was a very interesting read. I appreciated the description of how he came to his editorial decision, and I agree that getting more people access to the books is the important thing.

[ceares]

I hadn't heard about that. I think I actually am bothered by it because the further you get away from history the easier it is to whitewash it. For me I guess it's like that commercial I hate where the mom takes the family photo and just substitutes happy, smiley faces in, to give her the family she'd like instead of the one she has.

I worry that replacing painful, insulting words with ones that are less inflammatory, creating a softer, cleaner truth than the one that existed, kids that are so far removed from that reality will get the idea that it was less than it was.

Part of it for me is that people that get to meet Jim and care about him will flinch away from the word because of him, and honestly, with the varying ways that slave is used today it just doesn't have the same affect.

I guess I just wish there was another way to engage with this type of thing.

[jlh]

But a novel isn't history and isn't taught in a history class. And this novel is often taught to kids not in high school but in junior high. I've taught actual historical documents with that word in it, and I can tell you-it's incredibly distracting and takes quite some time to get the class past that word to what is actually being said, especially for the African-American students who want to simply say, "this writer is a racist" and go no further, and that was a college class of 20-year-olds. I can only imagine a room full of 12-year-olds. People come to the novel itself with their understanding of the word-I don't think hearing Jim referred to as it will make them flinch from it in the future. I mean, if the first character of color you've ever met is Jim, and you're 14, that's already a problem

[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

[ceares]

An addition to that--sorry, you've got me thinky now.

I'm sure you know what Arizona is doing with their Mexican American studies programs and what Texas is supposed to be doing with their history books, which could supposedly affect other states as well and it's just ways in which history gets buffed clean.

We read the Merchant of Venice in 9th grade and I remember my class being confused and kind of appalled and that became a teaching moment.