Publishers to censor Mark Twain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/05/huckleberry-finn-edition-censors-n-word

What do you think?

It seems to me that political correctness is not so much about the objection to certain words but more about exercising power. Words themselves are meaningless if you do not understand the language. Young children will use swear words if they hear them in exactly the same way they repeat any other word -- to increase their vocabulary. It is the reaction to certain words that teaches them the strengths of those words. As they become readers, they can decide for themselves how much they are moved emotionally by certain words.

I think we should leave Mark Twain alone.
He wrote in a different age.
Every one knows what the word is so just let it be.
Leave it in the book too.
Times do change and we shouldn't judge people years ago by people's standards now.

Teachers can explain it.

Books like Huckelberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird have the power to change the way a reader thinks and believes, just through the experience of reading them. Change the words, you reduce the horror of what happened and reduce the effectiveness of the material in changing society.

Ann

"Alabama publisher says expurgation of more than 200 'hurtful epithets' will counter 'pre-emptive censorship' that has seen Mark Twain's classic dropped from curricula"

The bolded is the real reason. If the book isn't selling, and the language is the reason, well, they need to do what it takes to sell it whether it destroys the integrity of the book or not. If no one is exposed to it to read it anymore, what does its historical integrity matter?

Many commentators are ignoring the reason given by the publisher and concentrating instead on their concern that exposure to racial epithets as routine language used by fictional role models will wrongfully influence our children.

I read both books as a child and was not so influenced, I believe.

Funny that rappers use that word -their music is largely nothing but filthy words strung together- and no one seems to have a problem with it. The $$$ they roll in proves that. Meaning that people think it's golden. The NAACP is occupied with important issues like calling Hallmark cards that reference "black holes" as part of as astronomy motif as racist. LOL. Well, not my problem, and I don't care. I never expected the school to be 100% of my kids' education; I figured if it could provide at least 80%, I'd fill in the rest.

Here is a list of banned books in the US.
Mark Twain will not suffer much.

Love,
Betty
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Love,
Betty

Here's another sanitized classic:
http://www.amazon.com/N-word-Narcissus-Joseph-Conrad/dp/9076660115

When this autobiography was published, author Dick Gregory said he didn't want anyone asking in bookstores for the book, "Colored Guy."

http://www.amazon.com/Nigger-Autobiography-Dick-Gregory/dp/0671735608/

My Friend Flicka????

Ann

Literature is written at a specific time and reflects that time. As a teacher of literature, I expect to use books that are in the hand as originally written unless, of course, they need translation. Even translators put their brand on a work. If the original author changes a work, so be it. If the rights to change it have been passed on, losing the original of a great classic is not my choice.

I used to attend a full gospel church service that was like a college education. The very well educated minister took each passage of the bible used and presented every possible translation within reason from the original texts to the present. It made for a dull Sunday morning, but certainly an enlightening one.

I love the book, The Little Prince, that I first read in the original French. Later, I read a translated copy that still kept the beauty of the poetic language. Recently, the original translation is disappearing for a more modern translation. The poetry is gone. I hold dearly to my worn original French and English translations.