Choosing Authors

In response to “New Voices Heard” (Metro, June 29):

As a white male, I “grew up reading mainly dead, white, male authors.” I was, after all, culturally predisposed to rafting on the Mississippi and harpooning white whales. “Hiawatha” and “Rip Van Winkle” were my stories. Unfortunately, because of my gender I could not penetrate the syntactical obscurities of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. My sister, being a white female, had no such problems. When teachers asked me who I was reading outside of class, I replied: “Why, dead white males, of course!”

The assumptions of feminist multiculturalism are at best condescending, at worst racist and sexist. I deny that the works of Kate Chopin and Alice Walker are in any way less available to me because of my gender and ethnic origin. I refuse to double-check an author’s sex and skin color for political correctness before opening up a book.

And “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is still the great American novel--no matter Mark Twain’s whiteness or maleness or deadness--because Huck looks past the cultural doctrines of his place and time to see into the human heart.

NEAL McCABE, Los Angeles