Why, I do declare.
Caught wind of this debate yesterday.
Don’t know if you’re a fan of Mark Twain, nom de plume for one Samuel Clemens, or have read any of his works, but it seems that publishers are forging ahead with a plan to reprint two of his classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Why? Well. The “N” word, of course.
Yeah, I remember reading Huck Finn back in the day, and Twain drops the “N” word like Busta Rhymes did in his 1998 Extinction Level Event. The problem now seems that the word is so offensive that it makes it a difficult read for many. Really?
Do I advocate the use of the word? Absolutely not. I hate the double standard that it’s cool for any individual to use it, based on race and upbringing. But what truly amazes me is that we have no sense of ourselves in this nation. We don’t know our own history, where the word came from, why it’s unacceptable, why Twain developed Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn or what Adventures of Huckleberry Finn offered in terms of humanity. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is one of the stupidest things I have ever read or heard–that a literary classic would be censored. These books are not written to please people of the future. Albeit they’re fictional accounts, they’re also historical depictions of the sociology of a particular time and place.
Sliding my soapbox aside, the real kicker of this “reprint” is the fact that they want to replace the N-word with the word “slave.” You tell me…which word is more offensive?
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