Debate rages over Huck Finn without the N word

By Andy Goldberg Jan 6, 2011, 15:12 GMT

Los Angeles - The American literary world has a new scandal.

A literature professor has edited a new, combined version of the beloved American classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Mark Twain's timeless texts have been updated by replacing the world 'nigger' with 'slave.'

The New South edition of the book, titled The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which was announced Tuesday, also removes the pejorative term 'injun' for native American.

Proponents of the move say the controversial language makes many readers feel uncomfortable, with the result that the seminal American novels are actually banned in many American elementary and high schools and school libraries.

In his introduction to the new edition, Twain scholar Alan Gribben notes that the offensive language is used in dialogue 219 times in Huck Finn and four times in Tom Sawyer. The original books, published in 1876 and 1884, describe life along the Mississippi River in the 1840s, when slavery and racism were simply facts of life.

The central relationship of Huckleberry Finn is between two traveling partners: the adventurous scamp Huck, who runs away from his guardian, and a runaway slave named Jim. Though the boy initially considers turning in Jim, they quickly become friends, and Huck's attitudes to slavery are changed forever.

In the book it is never the narrator who uses the N-word, but rather the uneducated characters who feature throughout the work. Gribben praises Twain's ability to accurately depict and satirize the racist attitudes of the 1840s but argues that the term needs to be scrubbed to bring the book to a wider audience.

'Abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority repulse modern-day readers,' said Gribben, who is editing the book. 'It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers.'

But the move has stoked a firestorm of criticism from experts who argue that cleansing the book in the name of political correctness does a disservice to the author and the legacy of African-Americans.

'It robs us of the sense that we've evolved, that we've gone from being the N-word to Mr President,' said the black cultural critic Michaela Davis in an interview on CNN.

'The N-word belongs in Huckleberry Finn,' argued Elon James White in Salon. 'The book, which deals directly with racism, is not better served by erasing the racial slur.'

White argued that the move reflects America's inability to talk candidly about race and the history of racism.

'America talks about race like scared parents talk with their kids about sex. If we continue with our horrendously skewed and willfully ignorant interpretations of history, we will find ourselves with a generation that's woefully misinformed.'

In The Wall Street Journal, black publisher Ishmael Reed wrote: 'Twain used the words with which he was surrounded, and to insist that he omit words is not only to put a gag on his characters but a gag on the Age.'