Monthly Archives: May 2009

Can Huckleberry Finn Damage Readers?

By Robin Bates | Published: May 5, 2009

Yesterday I mentioned that Huckleberry Finn has been banned in some schools, perhaps because of Huck’s liberal use of the “n” word. Now Twain, of course, doesn’t use that language because he himself is racist but because he wants to capture Huck’s “white trash” ignorance, which Huck then magnificently transcends. But the argument has gone […]

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Huck and My Desegregation Battles

By Robin Bates | Published: May 4, 2009

Here’s a personal story of how a literary classic came to my aid at a critical time in my life. When I was in sixth grade in Sewanee, Tennessee (the year was 1962), I was a plaintiff in a civil rights case. School systems all over the south were defying the Brown vs. Board of […]

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It’s “just” a story

By Robin Bates | Published: May 1, 2009

I promised to write about the “just” in “it’s just a story,” so here goes.  “Just,” an adverb meaning “only” or “simply.”  A way of saying that a story (and I’m talking of fictional stories here) is not something to be taken seriously.  Unlike, say, reality, which presumably is to be taken seriously.    Story slips us into the world of make […]

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