I don't support banning the book, but I think it is hard book to teach because it needs SO much context and a mature audience (lol good luck). Also, there are hundreds of other books from that era that are relevant even from Mark Twain's corpus so being obstinate about that book is a questionable position. I'm ambivalent honestly, but definitely not willing to die on that hill. (I graduated highschool in 1989 from a middle class suburb, we never read it.)
I mean, you gotta read it. I’m not normally a huge fan of the classics; I find Steinbeck dry and tedious, and Hemingway to be self-indulgent and repetitious. Even Twain’s other work isn’t exactly to my taste. But I’ve read Huckleberry Finn three times—in elementary school just for fun, in high school because it was assigned, and I recently listened to it on audiobook—and enjoyed the hell out of each time. Banning it simply because it uses a word that the entire book simply couldn’t exist without is a crime, and does a huge disservice to the very students they are supposedly trying to protect.
I have read it. I spent my 20s guiltily reading all of the books I was supposed to have read in high school but used Cliff's Notes instead. From my 20's perspective I found Finn insipid and hokey but that's because pop culture had recycled it hundreds of times since its first publication, however when I consider it from the period perspective I can see the satire and the pointed allegories that made Twain so formidable. (Funny you mention Hemingway. I loved his writing in my 20's, then went back and read some again in my 40's and was like "huh, this irritating and immature, no wonder i loved it in my 20's.")
