How Should ‘Huckleberry Finn’ Be Taught?

“Knowing that such a thing existed, it felt derelict to me to choose any other version” than the NewSouth edition, says Peter Mergenthaler, an English teacher in Washington, D.C., who is white. To have the word on the page “for kids to see, to read independently and either to misunderstand contextually or be grievously hurt by it — I don’t know that even with dozens of years of experience I would choose the uncensored version,” he adds. Maya Dunkley, one of his students, agrees with this approach. “You don’t have to read racism to learn about racism and learn that it’s wrong,” Maya, who identifies as biracial, tells me.

But most of the teachers I spoke to felt that Gribben’s effort, while well-intentioned, was misguided. The educator and scholar Jocelyn A. Chadwick, who is Black and has written extensively about pedagogy as well as about Twain and race, argues that it’s better for an inexperienced teacher not to teach the novel at all than to use the NewSouth edition. The slur, she says, is essential to the book. “It’s not a hip-hop word, it’s not a slang word, it’s a word that’s so filled with blood and agony and hatred,” she says, adding: “It’s supposed to hurt.” Eyob Sisay, a Black student from Washington, D.C., agrees. “Just knowing how jarring it is, and how casually and frequently it’s used in the story, I think it’s important for us to have that perspective,” he says.

Samantha Goodwin, who taught Eyob at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, spends several clblock periods contextualizing the slur, using the work of the linguist Geneva Smitherman and the historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. I sat in on one of her clblockes as she walked her students through the difference between milder Horatian satire, which is meant to be funny, and Juvenalian satire, the harshest form of the device, which Twain uses for his sharpest critiques. “It’s not meant to make you feel good,” she told me. It’s meant to make the reader uncomfortable — and angry.

Twain’s use of the word is part of his blockault on the hypocritical mores of supposedly genteel Southern society. People Huck and Jim encounter over the course of the novel — many of whom Huck believes he should respect as “quality” — participate in a blood feud that results in the deaths of multiple people, including children; try to swindle three grieving sisters out of their inheritance; and speak of Black people as less than human. “If you read it without understanding that it’s satire, your anger will be directed at the author,” Goodwin cautioned. This is exactly what often happens when students first encounter “Huck Finn.”

As the students debated where various scenes in the novel fall on the satirical spectrum, Goodwin, who is white, brought up Huck’s demeaning language about Black people. There was a pause in which I could see the discomfort on some students’ faces. Finally, a white student responded. “It’s supposed to anger you,” he said. “You feel like Huck has been taught that Black people aren’t human.”