Internet Resources
- The Museum Tour Guide Who Shaped Mark Twain’s Views on RaceWhile traveling in Venice for what would be his best-selling memoir, the author’s encounter with an African-American art expert forever changed his writing.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: how to write about race in the USWhat does Mark Twain’s novel about a white boy’s friendship with a runaway slave tell us about race in American literature? Benjamin Markovits revisits The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the light of recent tensions.
- Mark Twain's Inconvenient TruthsThe author of Tom Sawyer is avuncular, unthreatening, genial—cuddly almost. The Mark Twain that comes later has sharper edges, and may not be cuddly at all. What does it mean to embrace the tame Twain—the author of unthreatening books for children, beloved stories, and clever aphorisms—but to largely ignore the author of the hard-hitting essays and searing commentaries who grew increasingly disillusioned with the behavior of his countrymen and his fellow human beings generally?
- The psychologies of Mark TwainTwain's reputation as a sharp social critic was by then well-established through his verbal assaults on racial and sexual inequality; his anti-imperialist writings; and his fervent support of causes such as treatment of animals, including opposition to vivisection in animal experimentation.
Research & Reference
- An Analysis of Mark Twain's Use of Racial Terms When Describing African AmericansResearch article evaluating the use of racial terms in Mark Twain's works.
- Editing the Classics: Should Classic Works of Literature Be Edited to Make Them Less Offensive?Classic yet controversial books, such as Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, should be altered so that young people can read them without becoming embroiled in the controversy regarding their content. Removing the n-word from Huckleberry Finn, for example, will allow people to explore the themes and messages of the book without becoming preoccupied with the appearance of a single word.
Streaming Media
- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn And The Mississippi: A CommentaryGive students background information about Mark Twain and his work in this interview with noted scholar Lee chlesinger, Associate Professor of Literature at the State University of New York at Purchase. The program focuses on the deeper implications of Huckleberry Finn and makes an ideal introduction to the book.
Perspectives
Race in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A classic of American realism for its realistic portrayal of boyhood and of the pre-Civil War South, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows a boy escaping an abusive father and a runaway slave, Jim, as they journey down the Mississippi river. This incisive volume looks at race in Mark Twain's classic story, with an eye toward discussing race and racism. Essays discuss the life of the author, the river culture of Twain's time, the language used within the book, and racism in 21st century America. Essays from Toni Morrison, Barack Obama, and Larry Lipman.
The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn
Especially in academia, controversy rages over the merits or evils of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in particular its portrayal of Jim, the runaway slave. Opponents disrupt classes and carry picket signs, objecting with strong emotion that Jim is no fit model for African-American youth of today. In continuing outcries they claim that he and the dark period of American history he portrays are best forgotten. That time has gone, Jim's opponents charge. This is a new day. But is it? Dare we forget? The author of The Jim Dilemma argues that Twain's novel, in the tradition of all great literature, is invaluable for transporting readers to a time, place, and conflict essential to understanding who we are today. Without this work, she argues, there would be a hole in American history and a blank page in the history of African-Americans. To avoid this work in the classroom is to miss the opportunity to remember. Few other popular books have been so much attacked, vilified, or censored. Yet Ernest Hemingway proclaimed Twain's classic to be the beginning of American literature, and Langston Hughes judged it as the only nineteenth-century work by a white author who fully and realistically depicts an unlettered slave clinging to the hope of freedom. A teacher herself, the author challenges opponents to read the novel closely. She shows how Twain has not created another Uncle Tom but rather a worthy man of integrity and self-reliance. Jim, along with other black characters in the book, demands a rethinking and a re-envisioning of the southern slave, for Huckleberry Finn, she contends, ultimately questions readers' notions of what freedom means and what it costs. As she shows that Twain portrayed Jim as nobody's fool, she focuses her discussion on both sides of the Jim dilemma and unflinchingly defends the importance of keeping the book in the classroom. Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua is director of the American studies program at Dallas Institute for the Humanities.
Satire or Evasion?: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn
Though one of America's best known and loved novels, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has often been the object of fierce controversy because of its racist language and reliance on racial stereotypes. This collection of fifteen essays by prominent African American scholars and critics examines the novel's racist elements and assesses the degree to which Twain's ironies succeed or fail to turn those elements into a satirical attack on racism. Ranging from the laudatory to the openly hostile, these essays include personal impressions of Huckleberry Finn, descriptions of classroom experience with the book, evaluations of its ironic and allegorical aspects, explorations of its nineteenth-century context, and appraisal of its effects on twentieth-century African American writers. Among the issues the authors contend with are Twain's pervasive use of the word "nigger," his portrayal of the slave Jim according to the conventions of the minstrel show "darky," and the thematic chaos created by the "evasion" depicted in the novel's final chapters. Sure to provoke thought and stir debate, Satire or Evasion? provides a variety of new perspectives on one of this country's most troubling classics. Contributors. Richard K. Barksdale, Bernard W. Bell, Mary Kemp Davis, Peaches M. Henry, Betty Harris Jones, Rhett S. Jones, Julius Lester, Donnarae MacCann, Charles H. Nichols, Charles H. Nilon, Arnold Rampersad, David L. Smith, Carmen Dubryan, John H. Wallace, Kenny Jackson Williams, Fredrick Woodard
Sitting in Darkness: New South Fiction, Education, and the Rise of Jim Crow Colonialism, 1865-1920
Sitting in Darkness explores how fiction of the Reconstruction and the New South intervenes in debates over black schools, citizen-building, Jim Crow discrimination, and U.S. foreign policy towards its territories and dependencies. The author urges a reexamination not only of the contents and formal innovations of New South literature but also its importance in U.S. literary history. Many rarely studied fiction authors (such as Ellwood Griest, Ellen Ingraham, George Marion McClellan, and Walter Hines Page) receive generous attention here, and well-known figures such as Albion Tourgée, Frances E. W. Harper, Sutton Griggs, George Washington Cable, Mark Twain, Thomas Dixon, Owen Wister, and W. E. B. Du Bois are illuminated in significant new ways. The book\'s readings seek to synthesize developments in literary and cultural studies, ranging through New Criticism, New Historicism, postcolonial studies, black studies, and \"whiteness\" studies. This volume posits and answers significant questions. In what ways did the "uplift" projects of Reconstruction-their ideals and their contradictions-affect U.S. colonial policies in the new territories after 1898? How can fiction that treated these historical changes help us understand them? What relevance does this period have for us in the present, during a moment of great literary innovation and strong debate over how well the most powerful country in the world uses its resources?