Two of Mark Twain’s classic books, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” are being rewritten, or should I say, censored.
Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in "Huck Finn" and four times in "Tom Sawyer." He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those "which people praise and don’t read."
Published in the U.S. in 1885, "Huck Finn" is the fourth most banned book in schools, according to "Banned in the U.S.A." by Herbert N. Foerstal, a retired college librarian who has written several books on First Amendment issues.
Where this leads, who knows? To edit and censor books is astounding in this day and age. Censorship, whether for supposedly “moral” or “good reasons” is still censorship. Professor Stephen Railton of the University of Virginia, called this “a terrible idea”, adding that it was part of our history and a good way to get into conversations about racism within the schools.
"If we can’t do that in the classroom, we can’t do that anywhere," he said.
