The Book:
Mark Twain and Me Unlearning Racism
Cal Pritner had read Mark Twain since boyhood, both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at least twice. In 1991, after a semester of teaching on a round-the-world voyage with Semester at Sea, he began reading Twain as a travel writer, turned to reading Twain biographies, and was drawn to studying Twain's relationship to race and racism.
In 1996 and 1997 he created two performances as Twain: "Mark Twain: Traveling," and "Mark Twain: Unlearning Racism," and has since then performed them from New York City to Los Angeles and from Michigan to Missouri.
He has drafted, and continues to revise, a book that mirrors Twain's and his relationships to race: Mark Twain and Me Unlearning Racism. Twain and Cal were born 100 years apart (1835 & 1935) on opposite sides of Missouri to racist families; but for many reasons, including Twain's times and his international fame, they have struggled to unlearn their racism in profoundly different ways. See links to a mini-proposal and to a sample chapter below.