“We have all come to the conclusion that the community costs of reading this book in 11th grade outweigh the literary benefits,” Hall wrote. A meeting with the students and faculty last week ended with the faculty deciding to drop the book from the 11th grade American literature class, principal Art Hall wrote in a letter to parents. The latest to draw that line is the Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Philadelphia, which removed the book from its curriculum after a group of students reportedly said it made them uncomfortable. In 2011 the book was even revised, when a professor at the University of Virginia released a version that replaced the offending word with “slave.” It was first banned just two years after its release, and it remains controversial. Over the years a number of schools have struggled with keeping the book in their curriculum, citing the offensive nature of the language, which scholars argue Twain used exactly because he wanted to drive home a point about slavery, but also because he was trying to be true to the language of the day. The N-word shows up 219 times in Mark Twain’s classic 1885 tale of childhood adventure “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which tracks Huck’s flight from his drunken, abusive dad and journey down the Mississippi River with an escaped slave name Jim. 2023 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony.
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