I am an avid reader and have been all my life, but for some reason I completely skipped over Mark Twain as a kid. He was never assigned in any of my English classes, and besides, he was my older brothers favorite. I think I felt, as kids often do, that he was already taken. I moved on to other writers. So when I arrived here last spring and heard that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was Wallowa Countys Big Read selection for this year, I realized my time had come at last. And indeed, what fun we are having with this bookand Twainhere at Fishtrap!

My reading of Tom Sawyer over the recent Christmas holidays provoked the inevitable outbursts of laughter, but it was not without its moments of cringing, too. I expected to run into the n-word, given the setting of the book in a southern slave state in pre-Civil War times, but the other racial stereotypes took me by surprise. Particularly troubling to me was the character of Injun Joe. More than any other character in the book, Joe epitomizes evil. He is depicted as violent, heartless, greedy, and out for bloodthirsty revenge. He is given no redeeming qualities. A further twist comes when Joe goes undercover to hide from the law in the guise of a deaf and dumb Spaniard in a serape. It wasnt enough to depict him as a savage Indian; Twain chose to layer Joe with multiple stereotypes familiar to readers in his day… and ours. 

The announcement of the upcoming expurgated, n-word-free version of Twains other boyhood classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has brought that controversy front and center in public debate, which is good. But we should be engaged equallyif not more so in this part of the countryin critical reflection regarding Injun Joe. It is our hope at Fishtrap that our collective reading of Tom Sawyeror the rollicking Western travel chronicle Roughing It, now on my night stand can build on the Oregon Is Indian Country exhibit we brought to Enterprise in the fall. Lets use Twains own lifelong prejudices toward Indianswell documented throughout his writingsas a springboard for dialog and discussion in the coming weeks.

I raised this idea in a private conversation with Dr. Cindy Lovell, our first 2011 Big Read guest speaker, and she agreed. She then took particular care to address Injun Joe in her remarks at the Kick-Off last Sunday night. Over dinner she had said to me, Twain was a truth teller. He may have been blind to the plight of Indians during his life, but he would want you all to search for and speak the truth now. In Twains spirit, lets do.

---

Barbara Dills is interim executive director of Fishtrap.