One hundred and twenty-five years after The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published, a new edition of Mark Twain’s classic is purging some of the book’s most objectionable language. On Monday Publishers Weekly reported that NewSouth Books will replace the word “nigger” with the word “slave,” in a new edition due mid-February. They will also change “Injun” to “Indian” in the Tom Sawyer companion text, and just to be safe, “half-breed” to “half-blood.” What the Huck? In a statement posted to New South’s website, the publisher said the change “replaces hurtful epithets that appear hundreds of times in the texts with less offensive words.”
There’s no doubt that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is filled with regional dialect, often expressed in offensive, racist language. It’s a vernacular that reflects the cultural racism of the time, and Twain uses it to fire off satirical charges against the old South. But it can also make the book uncomfortable for many modern readers, and as a result fewer schools are assigning the work.
The man responsible for the changes, Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, says that’s exactly why he’s stripping out the controversial language. But should the text of a classic work be altered simply because it makes readers uncomfortable? Studio 360’s Kurt Andersen spoke with Gribben earlier today and cited Twain’s own words: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” As Kurt told Gribben, “I guess what you’re doing here is cutting up the steak for the babies.” Hear Gribben’s response and the rest of the interview here:
Gribben says his version of Huckleberry Finn is only one of several editions that are already available. The milder text is intended to keep the book in classrooms and open it up to readers who might otherwise be turned off because of censorship or personal taste. But is a wider readership really worth such a re-write? What is lost when we no longer confront the complicated ugliness of our own past? Tell us what you think.
-Derek John & Michael Guerriero
White liberals need to grow a pair and stop allowing revisionist history to wipe away the legacies of enslaved peoples on this continent. If we refuse to look at a word, in historical context, in American literature, we are cowards. Yet, craptacular pop culture, of which we ought REALLY be ashamed, exploits that word on a regular basis, to peddle their wannabe wares to suburban, white kids everyday, to the point where they’re calling EACH OTHER niggers! Anybody afraid to read Huclkeberry Finn in a classroom needs to get out of the teaching business and STOP revising American history!
I think it is Tragic that publishers have kowtowed to the censorship crowd. Thsoe words are used in the novel to show the ignorance of the time. This was Samuel clemens reasoning behind using them and having them in there now shows present day generations what things were like then. Why Gribben would do this after quoting Twain on censorship I cannot fathom. He is not only forbidding the man his steak but telling him that there is no such thing as steak in the entire universe.
I am white and a liberal and, shocking though it may be to not fit the label smacked upon me, I do not support changing uncomfortable books. Lots of things could be included in a classroom if we softened them up a bit, but to what end? And what do we expect these students to think when they leave these cozy, safe environs of school and come across real books? We underestimate our children and protect ourselves from uncomfortable truths we owe them.
It’s ridiculous. Instead of confronting the word, avoid it all together? That is about as useful as a chocolate tea-kettle. How disappointing that a scholar can be so blind. Completely changed age? Bull Sh**. The word is still being used, is still used offensively, and why the word has to be talked about early enough so that people know the sheer amount of weight behind this word. Foolish and wrong-headed.
What will happen when NewSouth Books tackles “Little Black Sambo” — “Vertically-Challenged, South Asia Native Sambo”?
white, liberal, jewish,female…I wouldn’t want to have to read in school, a book that said honky,red, kike, snatch… (hurts to even write these) without a clear understanding that this was written within a different context. Books can be prefaced with etymological clarifications and slur-disclaimers, and still be published and distributed with the offending words intact. it’s not the author’s intent that needs to be limned and elucidated, it’s the perception of the intent.
if we forget the impact of our slurs, we are condemned to repeat them…
The real danger is that this new version of the text might replace all previous ones. In attempting to win new readers with a school friendly version all past and potential readers could be deprived of a piece of American literary history when the publishing company decides to only print the new one from now on and the older copies become contraband because of censorship. The publishing company or perhap’s Twain’s descendant’s, whoever holds the copyrights in this case might have sold out a priceless trove of knowledge with this genuine era masterpiece.
After talking with a recently-retired high school English teacher I’m not opposed to the idea of this edition in principle. However, from what I’ve read it appears that they handled things poorly. First, while the introduction talks about the reasons for the change, it does not actually tell the reader which word was replaced — instead, it simply refers to the “n” word. Second, in every place where “slave” was substituted for “nigger,” the word “slave” should be in brackets so that the reader knows the author’s original word was changed. This is standard practice in publishing and scholarship, but it appears that they didn’t do this. If that’s right, their failure to use brackets is disrespectful to both the author and his readers. Third, the book repeatedly spells “Arab” with a hyphen, as “A-rab.” The insertion of the hyphen suggests that the word should be pronounced with excess emphasis on the first syllable. That pronunciation of “Arab” is a slur and is no less reprehensible than “Injun,” and yet the publisher changed “Injun” and left “A-rab” alone. All and all, Prof. Allan Gribben of Auburn U. has really botched his work on this project. Here’s hoping that his fellow Twain scholars roundly condemn him.
If children aren’t allowed to read “the ugly,” and be embarassed by it’s implications, how are they supposed to recognize and adjust their attitude to it in life.
Is it guilt or hubris that motivates this publisher to change published (fiction) literature without the author’s permission?
The cutting up the steak comparison doesn’t work because this level of re-writing is reducing this novel to McDonald’s meat.
A Politically Correct Proposal
As Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) tweeted yesterday,”[Huckleberry Finn is] public domain, so you can make Huck a Klingon if you want, but it’s not Mark Twain’s book.” John Green (@realjohngreen) was inspired and reconstructed a paragraph as if a novel of Klingon oppression was intended. http://imgur.com/lntj6 If the Comments censor excises the link, google it — it’s hilarious.
Gaiman is right, it isn’t Twain. However, substituting the jarring “Klingon” for the jarring-in-a-different-way “nigger” didn’t obscure Twain’s point — unlike substituting “slave.” Therefore, I suggest that NewSouth Book issue a Klingon edition.
But, there’s no adequate substitute for Injun Joe.
I absolutely want to compliment you on your using the “n word” to introduce the story and then saying you would drop the euphemism for the actual word throughout the rest of the story. If we let this go, where will it stop? Are we going to take out the 3oo+ uses of the word in To Kill A Mockingbird? Culture of the past elucidates the present and future. That can’t happen if we go back and sanitize the past so we have no reference. Great job.
Mark Twain must be rolling in his grave.
Twain opined that free speech is “the privilege of the grave,” since only the dead can “speak their honest minds without offending.” Not so. Even the dead are regularly censored. One of the most famous instances is Thomas Bowdler’s 1818 publication, Family Shakespeare, an expurgated version that could be read to families “without fear of offending their susceptibilities or corrupting their minds” (according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica). Bowdler’s name has since become synonymous with censorship.
Even if the motive is to have Twain more widely read, expurgating his books is not the way to do it. If you take words out of Huck Finn, why not Native Son, Slaughterhouse Five, Beloved and scores of other books containing language and ideas some people find objectionable? That’s how censorship works.
“Beware of large adventures in railroads, niggers, wild lands, new banks, old banks, manufacturing enterprises, steamships, regular and fancy stocks, which promise no redeeming dividends this side of 1860. When the winds blow, and the rains fall, and the floods descend, all these things may be swept away as within the brief space of a single night.” The New York Herald, February 4, 1857
This is the opening quote of my novel 31 Bond Street. Based on a true story of a murder, the racial tensions in NYC pre-Civil War were apparent in the newspaper articles I read and included verbatim. I was asked to read that quote on the radio but say ‘N-word.’ My daughter told me that my book would be banned at her school. The history of that period was terrifying for many, even in the North, and it does not enlighten or educate to censor out the past.
I’ve read all of the comment’s here and I just don’t get how this is even an argument. The word is offensive. I keep reading about context with regards to nigger in the book, but no one is mentioning context with regards to who this revised edition, (and it’s just an edition), is aimed at. It certainly isn’t for adults or even undergraduate students. It’s meant for children that wouldn’t be able to access the book as written. High school kids in an AP English class won’t read this edition. But you may want this edition if you’re going to want to engage kids more sensitive to that one word in particular. I don’t think replacing nigger with slave removes the underpinnings of this book’s message. It does however remove the self flagellation for some black people that accompanies that word, which has in fact made this excellent book all but inaccessible to many people. (This isn’t the time for an argument about the use of the word nigger in popular culture.) And yes the book is being further homogenized, but not appreciably more than it had already been with the cliff notes edition. But this time it’s for the sake of being more inclusive, and I’m certainly okay with that. But I’d listen to any rational explanation of why vulnerable children should be gob smacked with nigger 219 times in one book is more important.
I taught at a high school in Birmingham, Alabama, in which the student body and administration was 100% African-American. As a white teacher, there was absolutely no way I could assign Huckleberry Finn to my students, though they would have loved it if they could have gotten past the N-word on every page. Perhaps a few of my students could have handled it, but for the rest it would have been totally disruptive and we never would have been able to get to the real meaning of the book. Though my students would have accepted that word coming from the mouths of rappers and hip hop artists, they would not have tolerated it coming from a white author or teacher. I totally support NewSouth Books and Dr. Gribben for bringing out this edition, which can be ignored by teachers who are in situations in which the use of the N-word can be discussed less emotionally.