What the Huck?

From 2007 to 2017, I was an adjunct composition and linguistics instructor at Auburn University at Montgomery. I was often assigned to be  teaching during the evening, because my husband and I needed to have our schedules opposite one another to ensure one of us was home with our kids, then ages 7 and 2. Toward the end of the fall semester in 2010, I was returning to my husband’s office (adjuncts didn’t have offices, but my husband was a tenure-track professor and he let me use his) on the second floor of the Liberal Arts building, and passed by our former department head’s office. Alan preferred to teach evenings and usually got his way. The door was open, and I popped my head in and said hello and asked how he and his family were doing. 

We chatted for a while, and he excitedly told me about an upcoming publication that was due to be released around the first of the year. Alan is a Twain scholar, and he had created a new edition of Huckleberry Finn, one which he was certain would change the way the classic was viewed. He was contractually unable to tell me what the significant change was that he had made, but he was giddy - certain that the release would be controversial. He was correct.

From the outset, Alan’s substitution of the word slave for a racist epithet used to describe Jim met with mixed reaction. Some felt, like Alan, that it was a positive change, providing an opportunity for readers to experience the novel without being subjected to the slur. Susanne LaRosa, cofounder of New South Books, the publishing house that produced the novel, said at the time: “I almost don't want to acknowledge this, but it feels like he's saving the books.” 

Others felt it was censorship and deprived the book of its original purpose. “Cindy Lovell, executive director of The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri, [said]: ‘They have stood the test of time. The book is an anti-racist book and to change the language changes the power of the book. He wrote to make us squirm and to poke us with a sharp stick. That was the purpose.’”

Still others felt the change diminished Jim’s experience: “Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.”  

I am in no position to argue with any of these criticisms. I went to graduate school to study linguistics for a reason: literary criticism is not my strong suit by any stretch. I’m also a white lady from the midwest, and have no claim to any view of the term that was changed. 

Nonetheless, this event had a significant impact on my family, friends, and coworkers for a few days.

The English and Philosophy Department at AUM was wholly unprepared for the backlash. The news dropped during our new department head’s first week. The faculty and staff were inundated with emails and phone calls - their lack of participation notwithstanding - threatening them. My husband received several messages calling for his licensure (which isn’t a thing for university professors, but whatever) to be revoked because he was viewed as complicit by virtue of working at the same university. Alan was the recipient of death threats, because how dare he change such a sacred text? It was a scary time.

For 5 days it was the top story on national news reports. Then Gabbie Giffords was shot and the controversy was forgotten.  I don’t know if Alan’s career ever fully recovered - it certainly didn’t make him any friends.

Gates, Verna. “Scholar Reissues Huckleberry Finn Minus the ‘N’-Word.” Reuters, 5 Jan. 2011, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-twain-idUSTRE70460O20110105.

New ‘Huckleberry Finn’ Edition Does Disservice to a Classic - The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

“Upcoming NewSouth ‘Huck Finn’ Eliminates the ‘N’ Word.” PublishersWeekly.Com, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45645-upcoming-newsouth-huck-finn-eliminates-the-n-word.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2021.