Resources
on teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The
Struggle for Tolerance, an essay by the scholar Peaches Henry
on racism in the novel .
Racism and Huckleberry Finn an essay by Allen Webb on when,
how, and if to teach the novel.
WGBH television created a site to compliment the PBS special, "Born
to Trouble," that focuses on the innovative Huck Finn
curriculum developed in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
The Huck Finn and
Censorship Teacher Cyberguide developed for the California Online
Resources for Educators Project.
See
my list of works for teaching about slavery.
The
Struggle for Tolerance |TOP|
From Henry, Peaches. "The Struggle for Tolerance: Race
and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn" Satire and Evasion:
Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, 1992.
In the
long controversy that has been Huckleberry Finn's history,
the novel has been criticized, censored, and banned for an array of
perceived failings, including obscenity, atheism, bad grammar, coarse
manners, low moral tone, and anti southernism. Every bit as diverse
as the reasons for attacking the novel, Huck Finn's detractors
encompass parents, critics, authors, religious fundamentalists, rightwing
politicians, and even librarians.(1)
Ironically, Lionel
Trifling, by marking Huck Finn as "one of the world's
great books and one of the central documents of American culture,"
(2) and T. S. Eliot, by declaring it "a masterpiece," (3)
struck the novel certainly its most fateful and possibly its most
fatal blow.
Download
this complete essay.
Racism
and Huckleberry Finn |TOP|
From
Webb, Allen. “Racism and Huckleberry Finn: Censorship,
Dialogue, and Change” English Journal, Nov. 1993. Reprinted
with revision in Literature and Lives, NCTE Press, 2001.
Huckleberry
Finn
may be the most exalted single work of American literature. Praised
by our best known critics and writers, the novel is enshrined at the
center of the American literature curriculum. According to Arthur Applebee
the work is second only to Shakespeare in the frequency it appears in
the classroom and is required in 70% of public high schools and 76%
of parochial high schools. The most taught novel, the most taught long
work, and the most taught piece of American literature, Huckleberry
Finn is a staple from junior high (where eleven chapters are included
in the Junior Great Books program) to graduate school. Written in a
now vanished dialect, told from the point of view of a runaway fourteen-year-old,
the novel conglomerates melodramatic boyhood adventure, farcical low
comedy, and pointed social satire. Yet at its center is a relationship
between a white boy and an escaped slave, an association freighted with
the tragedy and the possibility of American history. Despite a social
order set against interracial communication and respect, Huck develops
a comradeship with Jim for which he is willing-against all he has
been taught-to risk his soul.
Download this complete essay.
Works
for Teaching about Slavery |TOP|
Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Douglass wrote three autobiographies, this is the first, shortest,
and most famous. A master of language Douglass contrasts the cruelty
of slavery with desire of slaves for knowledge and freedom. No Jim,
Douglas learns to read, explicitly adopts and develops abolitionist
arguments, teaches other slaves, fights back at one point punching
his master and plans a careful escape. The collection by Gates is
not only inexpensive, but includes three other important slave narratives,
those of Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and Linda Brent.
The Life of
Olaudah Equiano. Born in Africa in 1745 Olaudah was one of the
best traveled men of his age; his adventures take place in Africa,
the Caribbean, South America, London, Philadelphia, Spain, Turkey,
and the Arctic Circle. His account is one of the earliest views of
African society by an insider and is an interesting indictment of
slavery by a man who significantly assimilated to European culture.
Confessions
of Nat Turner. Not to be confused with the novel of the same name
by William Styron, Turner's original confessions were recorded by
a journalist named T. R. Gray and are probably the most riveting fifteen
pages you or your students will ever read. Throwing caution to the
winds Turner and his group of rebelling slaves would arrive at one
plantation after another, slaughter the white families and be joined
by many of the slaves before moving on. Though the rebels, including
Turner, were eventually caught and hung their revolt reveals that
anger and violent resistance were very much a part of slavery.
Incidents in
the Life of a Slave Girl by Linda Brent. As a teenager Harriet
Jacobs (aka. Linda Brent) had to withstand the cruelty and romantic
advances of her master. As a young woman she hid for years in order
to be out of slavery but near her children. Students will find in
this story of resistance to slavery a very different perspective than
that of Huck Finn. Brent is a sophisticated thinker and fine
writer.
Our Nig,
1859 by Harriet Wilson. The first novel by an African American woman,
Our Nig is about the oppression of black servants in the North rather
than about slavery per se. Alice Walker says of Harriet Wilson, "It
is as if weıd just discovered Phillis Wheatley or Langston Hughes....
She represents a similar vastness of heretofore unexamined experience,
a whole layer of time and existence in American life and literature."
Clotel: or,
The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown. An early African
American novel that explores the life of Thomas Jeffersonıs illegitimate
slave daughter. Students will find it fascinating.
The Marrow
of Tradition by Charles Chestnut. This fine turn-of-the-century
novel by a somewhat lesser known but excellent black novelist is perfect
for high school and college students. Set in the period just after
the end of slavery the novel uses a detective fiction style to explore
the experience of blacks in the South after the Civil War.
Roots by
Alex Haley. Though some of us may have seen the television movie and
read the book, many of our students have not encountered it. The video
series is a fine way to complement other reading about slavery and
presents one of the few depictions I know of slave capture and transportation
to America.
Mulatto by
Langston Hughes. Hughes's play offers a compelling look at personal
and social relations in the big house between slave masters, their
slave mistresses, and mulatto children. There is a certain mystery
about the period in which the action takes place that gives the play
a transhistoric dimension.
"Tribal Scars"
by Ousmane Sembene. A short story by the renowned Senegalese author
(found in a collection with the same name) this work examines the
effect on African culture of the slave trade.
Jubilee
by Margaret Walker. More approachable for most students than other
contemporary black fiction on slavery such as Toni Morrison's Beloved,
Ishmail Reedıs Flight to Canada, or Charles Johnson's Middle
Passage, Jubilee is a powerful and compelling novel of one womanıs
journey through slavery and its aftermath.
People's History
of the United States, by Howard Zinn, (1980) In a series of excerptable
and highly readable chapters Zinn offers a version of American history
from "the people's point of view." For use with Huck
Finn or as part of a unit on slavery the chapters "Drawing
the Color Line," and "Slavery without Submission, Emancipation
without Freedom" would be essential. Zinn's history offers other
chapters that complement many other works we teach and has a useful
bibliography.
The Slave Community
by John W. Blassingame, 1979. This is a classic study of the life
and culture of American slave communities. A valuable classroom resource
that is readable and contains numerous illustrations, students at
all levels will find it helpful.
Roll, Jordan,
Roll: The World the Slaves Made by Eugene Geneovese (1976) is
a massive and masterful study of slave culture written by a leading
African American historian. The work is surprisingly approachable
though encyclopedic. Geneovese's wife, Elizabeth Fox-Geneovese, has
also done important work on slave culture, particularly the experience
of women. Advanced students might want to examine Within the Plantation
Household (1988).
