Upcoming: NewSouth Publishing “Huck Finn” Eliminates The “N” Word

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called a classic by many  famous authors. It tackles all sorts of societal issues.  T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of “all modern American literature.” But why is it banned across the nation? Because of the word “nigger”.  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 is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.” Tom Sawyer was selected for 2009’s Big Read Alabama, and the NEA tapped NewSouth, in Montgomery, to produce an edition for the project. NewSouth contracted Gribben to write the introduction, which led him to reading and speaking engagements at libraries across the state. Each reading brought groups of 80 to 100 people “eager to read, eager to talk,” but “a different kind of audience than a professor usually encounters; what we always called ‘the general reader.’ The slur appears 219 times in the book. Publisher Suzanne La Rosa, “was that there Was a market for a book in which the n-word was switched out for something less hurtful, less controversial. We recognized that some people would say that this was censorship of a kind, but our feeling is that there are plenty of other books out there–all of them, in fact–that faithfully replicate the text, and that this was simply an option for those who were increasingly uncomfortable, as he put it, insisting students read a text which was so incredibly hurtful.”

 

This article helped me understand the controversy more because I understand both sides of it. I see the value of having the word “nigger” in the book because it is accurate to the time. By pretending that people did not speak so offensively we deny history and are bound to re-peat it. I am not saying by any means that we have any business saying it in any form in 2013, but we need to acknowledge that it is an offensive word that once held a terrible place in society. I also see the value of eliminating the word “nigger” completely. If we don’t want our youth reading the book to use it why would we include it? Although kids do not always use/ put into action what they read why would we even place this before them.  Jay Z would completely disagree with this. He would say, no we should over use the word and take away its power. My opinion is that by denying its existence and re-pacing it with slave we are giving the word more power. How we teach kids to use the word is determined by parents, friends and environment. What someone decides to say is only determined by that person, no one else.