SOURCE: Lester, Julius. “Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In Satire or Evasion?: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, edited by James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney, and Thadious M. Davis, pp. 199-207. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992.

In the following essay, originally published in 1984, Lester maintains that Huckleberry Finn fails to confront the realities of slavery.

I don't think I'd ever read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Could that be? Every American child reads it, and a child who read as much as I did must have.

As carefully as I search the ocean floor of memory, however, I find no barnacle-encrusted remnant of Huckleberry Finn. I may have read Tom Sawyer, but maybe I didn't. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are embedded in the American collective memory like George Washington (about whom I know I have never read). Tom and Huck are part of our American selves...