My guess is this will be a big seller in Alabama and Texas, two slave states.

I agree, it makes no sense to alter the text of the book. It should just be banned in secondary schools and relegated to American Literature college classes.

Could not agree more.

@2, 100 years? In the South they already claim it never happened.

What?!! It was written in a time period where use of that word was common, especially in the south where it takes place. You should never be aloud to alteran author's words, that is censorship. You can't change history because you feel uncomfortable, history is pretty all about overcoming bigotry and prejudice, usually through extreme violence to a specified group, both mentally an physically. You can't sugar coat it!! This man is by far the most misguided idiot english professor that I have ever heard of!! Why don't we just do that with all books that are written in a time period where there is blatant discrimination!! You would have to change almost every book ever written that was about the time period it takes place! Even now! What a fucking moron.

Read the book, don't just pick out words that bother you. He's no better than book burners in my opinion. They hear about one thing out of context that they are against, and want to change it. Huckleberry Finn is really anti-slavery considering Huck's friendship with Jim. Christ!! I'm sorry, this really upsets me...

The desire to understand the truth and the compulsion to avoid hurt feelings often represent incompatible drives.

I wrote a paper, maybe more like a book report, on the book and started out calling the character Nigger Jim and by the end just Jim. I was trying to be witty and mirror the usage in the book. My teacher did not get it.

I think the book should be used as written.

Again, it's about context and teachers having the professional development to teach the book. Not telling the kids what to think or how to interpret the book but the time in which it was written, how people talked and what it means to the book as a classic.

Interesting this comes on the heels of the Brave New World issue in Seattle Schools (which again, for the record, was not about banning a book).

The word is the whole point. It created a subject position that was not human, and therefore ownable. You were a nigger because you were a slave, not the other way around. Twain is somewhere shaking his head. . .

Why not just replace it with African-American Gentleman?

Because that' s not the word.

While I agree that changing the book seems very wrong, it's important to realize that these issues feel different in different places. A reading of Huck Finn in a classroom at AUM is a wholly different experience from a reading of Huck Finn at UW, I promise. My experience of living the first 23 years of my life in Alabama (half of that in Montgomery) is this: no one, and I mean NO ONE, is more aware of our country's history of slavery and the South's involvement in it than people from the South. Certain sheltered groups of white folks might still argue its merits or deny that the effects of that involvement are ongoing, but they are very aware of what happened.

While here in the rest of the world it's useful to have very powerful reminders of the hate speech and racial crimes so prevalent during that old sad era, the south is *still living in that era* and doesn't need the reminder. They really do, in so many communities down there, still need to work on removing that word from the local lexicon.

Changing the N-word to "slave" might not be best for the book, but it might be best for the community. I'm sure this is what motivated the professor's actions, rather than a lack of sensitivity towards the text.

I'm still not sure changing the book is right, but I recommend considering the cultural differences here before rushing to judge what seems obvious and simple but is really quite the opposite.

He's more than merely a shitty English professor. He's demonstrated that he has no respect for literature. That's much worse.

@12

*buzzer sound* Sorry, but no. The cultural problem of the South isn't that they were one of the last places in the European diaspora to end slavery, or even that they fought tooth and nail to continue it. The problem is that, even by your own admission ("They really do ... need to work on removing that word from the local lexicon.") the culture of the South does not look at that era as a time of moral backwardness or unsophistication, but as a time that was glorious, and something to aspire to. The rise of the KKK, their long-standing official, then unofficial use of the confederate flag, even their ludicrous holding onto the Democratic party for the simple reason that Lincoln was a Republican, these are examples of how the South is still fighting for the right to own slaves. Like Hester Prynne, they continue to embroider the A. Unlike Hester, their sin is part of a developed moral code, instead of the outdated code of 17th C. Boston.

It is a culture that is still steeped in moral immaturity, and the lessons of Huckleberry Finn, w/ all it's rawness, still needs to be read. They *do* need a constant reminder of what they are *really* longing for: It's not the bucolic happiness of the antebellum South, but a savage time where the leaders all belonged to the same moral turpitude. There are plenty of things to be proud of in Southern culture, but the South continually eschews these for that whitewashed fantasy of their moral right to own slaves.

Next he'll rewrite porn fiction by removing any instances of penis or boobs.

Or maybe he can go on to alter gangsta rap by removing all the n-words.

* eyeroll *

@15: I never said the book doesn't need to be read. In fact, I suspect that you didn't read my comment very thoroughly. Try again.

They just let a guy off of death row in Texas who was there for 30 years.

After his innocence was proven due to DNA evidence.

Like heatherly @12, I'm conflicted, and not as obviously passionate about the issues as many commenters.
Sure, people in certain places might use "nigger" in its more "original" meaning, but generally in polite society and the media, the word's meaning has changed greatly (it seems to me, a white skinned Australian). "Slave" still maintains its historical meaning to a large extent.
On the other hand, IIRC it was explained early in the book that, by many people in those parts at that time, all black people were "niggers", even those who weren't slaves. There were freed slaves in the North, for example.
The point is, as heatherly so eloquently makes it, is that the book needs to be read most in the places where things are still most like the book (and that's a global challenge IMO). If changing the language of the book helps that, I'm in favour. After all, wasn't it the intent of the author to inform the audience of how things were, and perhaps motivate them toward change?

I'm sorry but this ought not be even questioned in 2011, you do not revise art! What the hell is wrong with people that they'd even be discussing this? I'd rather the book be burned than molested by what amounts to an academia thats about as moraly equivical in there given realm of "expertise" as the fucking Church is to theirs.

The book is problematic, and was written at a problematic time. It was not, I might add, written especially for high school students. The original word is absolutely necessary to place the book in its proper historical and social context, and it reveals something important about the author, Mark Twain, one of those people who defines what American writing is. It's a horrible word, and it should be kept exactly as it originally appeared.

Could there be a more charged word than "nigger" in our culture? In Huck Fin, nigger is a central to the text. A slave could be anyone, including, for example, an Irish indentured servant. But a nigger is specifically a black person who is considered subhuman. This fact is codified in our constitution--it is where the 3/5ths of a man is found. A nigger was not just a slave, but a non-person who was thought to actually be IMPROVED by their enslavement. Changing "nigger" to "slave" is not trivial--it whitewashes this ugly part of our history.

Here's a thought. Don't just drop Huck Finn on high school students. Pair it with the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass so they can really understand what "nigger" signified in Twain's time.

This is just stupid. I can't wait to hear Charles "everything's a race issue" Maudede's opinion on this one.

Really? You guys would rather people don't teach/read the book because of the one hurtful word, than to provide an option without that word *for those who want it* ?

I thought the point was to attract attention towards the book's ideas?

What if "nigger" was replaced by another word that retains essentially the same usage and meaning as it did in 1830 - 60, such as "coon" (I'm guessing), or something more obscure but still accurate and relevant? That should retain the meaning of the text essentially unchanged, AND reduce offense to people who still have to bear with being called niggers in their daily lives.
Whether this is an acceptable solution depends on whether the intention is to change the word because it is offensive, or because it no longer retains the same meaning...

Perhaps they could change the word to "Hey, Faggot" since nobody's using that one anymore.

This is the equivalency of literary time travel to change the past.
Altering the realities of precedent epochs or generations for the convenience of the present is unethical at best; it is a dangerous revision of history and an Orwellian nightmare at its worst form Printed matters seem to be in their way out and will be replaced by digital media. That means, those that control the media will be able to alters or erase the breath, the scope or the essence of historical documents for their convenience while destroying or vilify the facts about their adversaries. Now it is easy to delete any information from those electronics books or the web sites.
Could you imagine that in a thousand years from now a new empire decided to revise history and declared that the United States of America never existed and it was a myth like the Atlantis They could alter history to say that the black plague, the extermination of the people in the new world, Black slavery in the Americas or the holocaust were myth. Could you imagine after a slow process of altering words and paragraphs from the facts whether it would take 100 or 10,000 years they will arrive to prove that people such as Hitler, Stalin, Alexander the Great, Voltaire, Franz Kafka, Isaac Newton, James Maxwell, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Lincoln, Douglass Mc Arthur, Richard Milhous Nixon, William Jefferson Clinton, George Bush, or Barack Hussein Obama never existed.
This revision of history is wrong.

This is literally the only word I will not utter; that is how offensive and revolting I perceive it to be. Yet, what would I have learned from Mark Twain about America a hundred years ago, without his ability to transport me to that place and time with his talent for verbal accuracy, and for giving voice to people different from himself?

"This is how people talked," we were taught as we read the book together as a class (I think in middle school). And we marveled, as we should, at how things had changed somewhat for the better since that time. Also, it was in reading Huck Finn that I became sensitized to that word and the bag of hurt that it represented.

Perspective is what you get from Mark Twain. Plus he was an important writer whose words should never be changed (jeez, duh).

@12 Heatherly, I really appreciate your perspective. I think teaching this book to high school students can be really complex with different student demographics. I haven't decided what I think about the edited/censored version- it's a major topic of debate among my colleagues. I do, however, recognize that there are valid reasons to omit the n-word just as there are important reasons to include it. I think the knee jerk reaction from most commenters really displays their inability to think critically about this issue.