Reader’s
COMMENTARY
by Jocelyn Chadwick
The Quintessential Assault:
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
vs. Political Correctness
and Comfort
In early January 2011 New South Books set off a flurry of
media reports and protests when it announced the publication of
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition, a “continuous narrative”
version of the two novels in which 219 instances of the word
“nigger” are replaced with the word “slave.” (http://www.new
southbooks.com/bkpgs/detailtitle.php?isbn_solid=1588382672)
NCTE Secondary Section Committee member and Twain
scholar Jocelyn Chadwick began crafting her response. She was
called for interviews, including one with New York City’s public
television station WNET (On Huckleberry Finn, the N-Word—
and What Basquiat Would’ve Done [http://www.thirteen.org/
bookish/on-huckleberry-finn-the-n-word%E2%80%94and-whatbasquiat-wouldve-done/].
Jocelyn Chadwick extends what she said in the WNET interview in this essay.
The Issue: What makes this Twain
development different, and why now?
I deplore art that is only that [art for art’s sake]; I think
[that] is just rather a fresh, young, new idea that’s
about 80 or 90 years old—art for art’s sake. I think it
[art] has to represent the world that the artist inhabits,
or somebody inhabits, and it has a missionary quality in this sense—it should enable; there should be
some epiphany, some shock of recognition—some
way in which one sees clearly. It shouldn’t be a solution, necessarily; this is not an Anacin or an aspirin
that takes away a headache; it is to move us a little bit
further down a road that might be called toward real
civilization. —Toni Morrison (In Black and White: Conversations with African-American Writers: Toni Morrison
[video, Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities, 1999])
In these sentences, Toni Morrison defines the role of
art/literature and its intended impact upon the audience.
Ironically, since that time, within the frame of teaching
both fiction and nonfiction in public school classrooms,
we continue to encounter impediments, well-intentioned
or not, to our ability to teach effectively works deemed
challenged.
The specific work that has generated this piece is Mark
Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer: The NewSouth Edition. Since Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the United States
in 1885, the novel has continued to spark controversy,
censorship, lawsuits, and passionate conversation. Yet
high school English teachers persevere in their teaching
the work.
Therefore, considering this rather unique history,
those well familiar with the historical pedigree of this
work, as well as those just coming to it, should rightly
ask, as Gillian Reagan, a WNET reporter, did, “So what
makes this controversy with Alan Gribben (editor of the
new edition) so different?”
Two factors make this latest assault different. First,
according to Professor Gribben, students and audience
members “seemed to prefer” his expurgated readings
of Twain’s work to the originals: “I could detect a visible
sense of relief . . . as though a nagging problem with the
text had been addressed.” The “nagging problem” to
which Professor Gribben refers is, of course, race, racism,
and Twain’s style of addressing both. Secondly, and most
critical, what Professor Gribben has done to this historical, primary source creates subsequent ripple effects that
we as English language arts educators cannot, even dare
not, yet imagine.
What are the facts and the myths of Alan
Gribben’s rationale for his redaction of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
Professor Gribben asserts his rationale for this new
redaction of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn responds to how one “expresses”
race in the 21st century. He further states that while “[w]
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e may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American
literary realist to record the speech of a particular region
during a specific historical era, . . . abusive racial insults
that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority
nonetheless repulse modern-day readers.” (Gribben’s
introduction, http://www.newsouthbooks.com/twain/
introduction-alan-gribben-mark-twain-tom-sawyer-huckle
berry-finn-newsouth-books.html)
While one may indeed commend Professor Gribben
for his intent, the reality of his approach will not staunch
the sting of racism in and outside of the classroom. In fact,
students and Americans are being “repulse[d]” everyday
by “distinct connotations of permanent inferiority” by
politicians, frustrated white Americans who fear the growing numbers of nonwhite Americans, and, yes, by those of
color who insist on using racial slurs in their daily lexicon.
What Professor Gribben desires to accomplish through
his redaction is a myth because English language arts
teachers empower students to traverse critically the
rhetoric of race and racism through both historical and
contemporary literature. Literature such as Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn; To Kill a Mockingbird; Bless Me, Ultima;
House on Mango Street; Their Eyes Were Watching God; or
works by Toni Morrison; Luis Rodriguez; Malcolm X;
Martin Luther King, Jr.; Langston Hughes; or Amy Tan,
for example, that do indeed take students into uncomfortable yet realistic cultural moments, character interactions,
and historical incidents, also allow English language
Arts educators to create a safe atmosphere conducive for
discussion and exploration and discovery. Relying on effective instructional strategies rather than text redaction
allows teachers to engage students and make relevant
literature from historical moments, different cultures, different beliefs, and different customs.
English language arts educators do not seek to create
in students a sense or feeling of “permanent inferiority”
in literature; however, we do seek to expose students to
the world through literature—unfiltered, unredacted,
uncensored. In fact, with the redactions Professor Gribben
makes in these two works, he has essentially taken from
not only Mark Twain but also from English language arts
teachers the verisimilitude of the works as well as the verisimilitude of how we teach critical thinking and discussion through historical and contemporary literary texts.
What will necessarily be the ripple
effects from Alan Gribben’s redaction of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
What do all of the following authors and thinkers
have in common?
Langston Hughes; W.E.B. DuBois; Frances Harper;
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Pauline Hopkins; Ernest Hemingway; William Faulkner;
William Shakespeare; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Alice
Walker; Zora Neale Hurston; James Baldwin; Toni Morrison; Dee Brown; Ernest Gaines; Ralph Ellison; Harper
Lee; Kate Chopin; John Griffin; Amy Tan; John Grisham;
Malcolm X; Walter Dean Myers; Luis Rodriguez; Harriet
Beecher Stowe; Mildred Taylor; Laura Ingalls Wilder;
Richard Wright; Rudolfo Anaya; John Quincy Adams;
Thomas Jefferson; Mark Twain; Robert Lipsyte; and
William Shirer?
All of these writers, thinkers, Founding Fathers, and
historians have in their writings used what Professor
Gribben has now deemed “a nagging problem” for the
21st century: words—sometimes shameful, sometimes
hateful, but always disturbing. Regardless of how we
feel or react, they are still words, words with meaning—something that lingers in the ether as they do on the
printed page or in memory.
Aside from the instructional impact Professor Gribben’s redaction of Twain’s two novels will create in our
classrooms, his decision may indeed impact other works
we teach—whether we will be allowed to teach them,
whether we will be allowed to teach them in their pristine
state without “helpful redactions,” and how we determine to present them to our students. Now, because of
Professor Gribben’s efforts to rethink and redact primary
texts, others may very well agree that, while “race matters
in these books, . . . it’s a matter of how you express that in
the 21st century”; thereby, setting the stage for redactions
of any work, any author at will.
For example, read the following quote from Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail”
(1963):
I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the
stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when
. . . you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old
son asking in agonizing pathos: ‘Daddy, why do white
people treat colored people so mean?’; when you take
a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep
night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your
automobile because no motel will accept you; when
you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging
signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’; when your first
name becomes ‘nigger’ and your last becomes ‘John,’
and when your wife and mother are never given the
respected title ‘Mrs.’; . . . then you will understand
why we find it difficult to wait.
In this letter, King uses colored, Negro, Black, and
nigger—each with its own specific connotations and
history. To redact any one use of these terms necessarily
and substantively affects the tone, mood, authorial intent,
and, consequently the message and purpose. For those
who would say, well, yes, Dr. King is different; he can use
those terms but no one else and certainly, no white person should use them. As English language arts teachers,
we must reiterate that we defend an author’s purposeful
and instructional use of language—regardless of race and
gender. King’s use of these racially-sensitive terms is just
as valid and reflects the verisimilitude of the period in the
same way as Mark Twain’s.
We must also consider Professor Gribben’s decision to
insert “slave” in lieu of nigger. For example, does Thomas
Jefferson’s use of “slave” and, for that matter, “blacks,” in
Notes on the State of Virginia satiate the “nagging problem” of race for 21st-century readers? Using the term,
“black,” Jefferson states:
I advance it therefore, as a suspicion only, that the
blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made
distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the
whites in the endowments both of body and mind.
Using “slave,” Jefferson states his views on the negative impact slaves, African slaves, are having on white
Americans:
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the
manners of our people produced by the existence of
slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual; exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on
the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it . . . .
“Slave” or “black”—are we less cognizant of race and
racism in this primary source? Do we feel better through
the use of these “acceptable “ terms?
Of course not; and we would not support redaction
of this primary text either; rather, we take texts and use
them as vehicles for critical thinking, historical exploration and discovery, as well as vehicles for understanding
how the texts’ messages do or not yet resonate in the 21st
century. We know texts such as these do necessarily make
students uncomfortable, but we also know that, in the environs of our classrooms, we create safe spaces for these
discussions and discoveries to occur.
How should we as English language arts
teachers respond to this different form of
censorship?
So where do we go from here? From this critical juncture, we must retain control of our craft and our expertise for the sake of our students and for the purpose of
teaching English language arts. I have often admonished
myself and our colleagues that we are not in ELA classrooms, training the next English major or professor. We
are in our classrooms with real students who rely on us
to engage them productively and realistically in critical
thinking and dialogic exchange through literature. That
literature at times is decidedly not safe or “happy” literature, but is literature that as Morrison says moves us and
our students toward a path of seeing clearly what civilization was, is, and may be is our instructional objective.
As ELA teachers, and more importantly, educators, we
cannot allow the literature we have deemed appropriate
and relevant to be co-opted as Judge Reinhardt states in
his US Circuit Appeals Opinion for Monteiro v. Tempe
(1998):
. . . it would be folly to think that there is a certain
“safe” set of books written by particular authors that
all will find acceptable. . . . the function of books and
other literary materials, as well as of education itself,
is to stimulate thought, to explore ideas, to engender
intellectual exchanges. Bad ideas should be countered
with good ones . . . It cannot be disputed that a necessary component of any education is learning to think
critically about offensive ideas—without that ability
one can do little to respond to them.
Consequently, we must continue to know our students,
to prepare the contexts of all works and time periods we
teach, to know our content, as Jim tells Huck, “by the
back.” When, therefore, we are buffeted by controversy,
serious controversy such as Professor Gribben has introduced, we can reassure our students, their parents, our
districts that we, as content and pedagogical experts, understand the concerns and that we are addressing them
everyday.
Jocelyn Chadwick is a member of NCTE’s Secondary Section Steering Committee [http://www.ncte.org/
second/committee ]. A nationally recognized Twain
scholar, she is the author of The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn (University Press of
Mississippi, 1998)
Chadwick contributed a unit outline on teaching
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for NCTE’s Classroom Notes Plus newsletter (January, 2006). “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: New Perspectives on an
Old Classic” is intended to function as a guide from
which to craft lesson plans, and includes a variety of
approaches and resources, plus the handout “Teaching Racially Sensitive Literature: A Teacher’s Guide.”
It can be downloaded from:
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/
Journals/CNP/NP0233January06.pdf
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