Okotoks Public Library director Tessa Nettleton doesn’t sit on the fence when it comes to the issue of censorship.
Nettleton is staunchly against censorship which is why she continued to champion Freedom to Read Week which will be celebrated across Canada Feb. 20 to 26.
When Nettleton heard a southern US publisher was releasing a revised version of Mark Twain’s classic 1884 novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” with some uncomplimentary racial labels removed she was appalled.
“The story is set in a specific time period,” she said. “I understand the language is not acceptable now, but if you did that to every single book with offensive language that’s been published over hundreds of years, you’d be changing so much of what has been written.”
The recently released “Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition” not only combines two of the author’s most celebrated works into one continuous narrative it removes the racially insensitive “n-word” as well as the Native American slur “injun”.
Nettleton said the changes could be the initial step on a slippery slope.
“It could be a precedent for something that’s really ridiculous,” she said. “There could be people going through all sorts of books deciding they don’t like this word or that word. The whole thing about censorship is that it can quickly become very broad.”
During Freedom to Read Week the Okotoks Public Library will have a prominent display including a list of challenged books of the last 40 years. Books on the list include Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaids’ Tale” targeted by some for its profane language and portrayal of the sexual degradation of women in a speculative future society. The fantasy work “The Golden Compass” and it’s sequels “The Subtle Knife” and “The Amber Spyglass” have been removed from some Catholic school shelves in Canada for allegedly undermining belief in God.
During Freedom to Read Week the Okotoks Public Library will have books like these on display covered with brown paper, indentified by title and author and will have a “Read a Challenged Book” label attached to them. Within their pages will be information describing the challenges that have been leveled against the literary work.
Nettleton asserted the controversy over some books really comes back to the word freedom. She said adults should decide on their own which books they want to read or their children to read.
“We’ve had people in the library before who complain about books that we have brought in for the youth,” she said. “They find their child reading a book and to them there’s something contentious in it or there’s some sexual content and they want the book removed. I’m sorry, for me it’s just a matter of if you don’t like it, don’t check it out. It’s not right that they think they have the power to stop a book from being printed the way it is written.”
Diane Osberg, chair of the Sheep River Library board is much more conflicted about the revised edition of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
“I understand people’s sensitivities to certain language but the original publication is what it is,” she explained. “It’s a good story that deserves to be read and understanding those sensitivities if it makes it more acceptable, particularly for the school systems, that it has to be changed then I guess it has to be.”
While Osberg said she understood why some people would think it necessary to change prose in some works, she would never be comfortable with censoring a published work. She said she hoped instead adults could find a positive, enlightening way to share stories like Huckleberry Finn with their children, teaching them the vernacular of the bygone age is no longer accepted and why it is no longer accepted in society.
Those who want to know more about the debate surrounding challenged books can check out Freedom to Read Week Feb. 20 to Feb. 26 at the Okotoks Public Library.
