Next month, Alabama-based NewSouth Book's will release a censored version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that will replace the word “nigger” with “slave” and “injun” with “Indian”.
This book is a troubling example of the whitewashing our nation's history and will do a disservice to our youth by denying them to opportunty to engage in mature conversations about race in America.
Let's tell NewSouth Books that students deserve better than a censored version of our nation's racial past, and that they should cancel the release of the censored Huck Finn.
Don't Release a Whitewashed Huck Finn
Dear NewSouth Books,
In the United States, mature discussions of race and racism are rare. Instead of openly engaging with the complex ways in which all of us experience race everyday, Americans tend to shy away, calling themselves “colorblind”.
NewSouth Book's censored version of Mark Twain’s "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn" is a worrying example of this trend. We are doing a disservice to our nation's youth by refusing to engage in mature, nuanced conversations about our country's difficult racial past.
NewSouth Books purports to "believe strongly in the transformative power of information and knowledge", yet has participated in the censorship of one of the nation's most important works of literature.
For the good of our nation's students, please do not released a censored version of Huck Finn.
Sincerely,
[Your name]