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A comment on 21st-century editors should keep their hands off of 20th-century books. Parent comment

Re:21st-century editors should keep their hands off of 20th-... by civilitty on Monday June 12, 2023 @06:58PM (#36302551)
> The way my grandmother spoke would be cut out of a modern novel as a racist stereotype.

That’s nothing new sadly, especially in academia. It used to be considered proper literary form to “translate” how people actually spoke to “proper English” and you can imagine the demographic of the people doing the “translating.”

See for example Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" [1] about one of the last living former slaves in the US. It was published a few years ago nearly a century after it was written because the author refused to white wash the subject’s language and couldn’t get it published in her life time.

Hell that criticism could easily be leveled at some of the most popular western canon like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_...

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Re:21st-century editors should keep their hands off of 20th-... by quacked on Thursday June 15, 2023 @05:41PM (#36346916)
Barracoon is the greatest work of anti-slavery literature I've ever read. It wouldn't have been as effective if they'd removed his dialect. "Sometimes I think I die in my sleep when I dream bout my mama." I had tears in my eyes.
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