My Take - Huck Finn - WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL

My Take - Huck Finn

An upcoming edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is causing controversy. The publishing house has decided to remove all instances of the n-word as well as the word "injun." They say it's an attempt to update the book and bring it into modern times. But what they're forgetting is that books are more than just entertainment. They are history. Books—just like music, movies, TV shows and art—are cultural snapshots of the era in which they were written. By trying to sanitize Huck Finn, they're saying "Let's whitewash history and forget that people once thought this way." Reading Huck Finn as it was originally written isn't an endorsement of its ideas, but a reminder of how many Americans felt in the 1880s. And it's from those pages that we can see—and show our children--how far we've come as a society. So I say leave Huck Finn alone. You don't have to like very word you read, but if you want to understand the fundamental struggles of America's history, you have to read the bad words as well as the good. I'm Vanessa Oubre and that's my take. What's yours?

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