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Found out my favorite childhood book was banned in 3 different countries
I was looking up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a book club and discovered it's been banned in places like China and parts of the US for its language. That surprised me because I read it in 6th grade and thought it was about friendship and freedom. Has anyone else found a book you loved getting censored and it changed how you saw it?
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gray_schmidt85mo ago
But did it make you want to read the original version more?
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burns.ruby5mo ago
aaron896 asking if you missed something reading the "sanitized version" is kind of missing the point for me. I get why people say that, but in my experience, the whole idea of a "real" version is tricky. Huck Finn has always been messy, and the parts that get banned are usually the N-word, which I don't think is some hidden treasure you're missing out on. Taking it with a grain of salt, the book's heart is still there in any version - it's still about Huck wrestling with his conscience against what society tells him. So finding out it's banned didn't really change how I see the story, it just reminded me that the things that make people uncomfortable are often the things that make a book worth talking about. Your mileage may vary, but I don't think censorship makes the book more interesting or less - it just shows how powerful it still is.
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