Editing Uncle Tom's Cabin (section)

===20th century and modern criticism===

In the 20th century, a number of writers attacked ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' not only for the stereotypes the novel had created about African-Americans but also because of "the utter disdain of the Tom character by the black community".{{sfn|Dinerstein|2009|p=83}} These writers included [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]] with his collection ''[[Uncle Tom's Children]]'' (1938) and [[Chester Himes]] with his 1943 short story "Heaven Has Changed".{{sfn|Dinerstein|2009|p=83}} [[Ralph Ellison]] also critiqued the book with his 1952 novel ''[[Invisible Man]],'' with Ellison figuratively killing Uncle Tom in the opening chapter.{{sfn|Dinerstein|2009|p=83}}

[[File:Uncle Tom and Eva, Staffordshire, England, 1855-1860, glazed and painted ceramic - Concord Museum - Concord, MA - DSC05597.JPG|thumb|''Uncle Tom and Eva'', a [[Staffordshire figure]] produced between 1855 and 1860]]

In 1945 [[James Baldwin]] published his influential and infamous critical essay "Everybody's Protest Novel".{{sfn|Shelby|2012|p=515}} In the essay, Baldwin described ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' as "a bad novel, having, in its self-righteousness, virtuous sentimentality".{{sfn|Baldwin|2017|p=1}} He argued that the novel lacked psychological depth, and that Stowe, "was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer".{{sfn|Baldwin|2017|p=2}}<ref name="Rothstein">{{cite news|first=Edward |last=Rothstein |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/arts/23conn.html |title= Digging Through the Literary Anthropology of Stowe's Uncle Tom |work=[[The New York Times]] |date= October 23, 2006 |access-date= March 10, 2022}}</ref> [[Edward Rothstein]] has claimed that Baldwin missed the point and that the purpose of the novel was "to treat slavery not as a political issue but as an individually human one – and ultimately a challenge to Christianity itself."<ref name="Rothstein"/>

[[George Orwell]] in his essay "[[Good Bad Books]]", first published in ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]'' in November 1945, claims that "perhaps the supreme example of the 'good bad' book is ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other." But he concludes "I would back ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' to outlive the complete works of [[Virginia Woolf]] or [[George Henry Moore (author)|George Moore]], though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies."{{sfn|Orwell|1968|p=21}}

The negative associations related to ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'', in particular how the novel and associated plays [[#Creation_and_popularization_of_stereotypes|created and popularized racial stereotypes]], have to some extent obscured the book's historical impact as a "vital antislavery tool".{{sfn|Appiah|Gates|2005|p=544}} After the turn of the millennium, scholars such as [[Henry Louis Gates Jr.]] and [[Hollis Robbins]] have re-examined ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' in what has been called a "serious attempt to resurrect it as both a central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations."<ref name="Rothstein"/>

In China, ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' experienced a revival of interest in the early 1960s.<ref name=":Gao">{{Cite book |last=Gao |first=Yunxiang |title=Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century |date=2021 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |isbn=9781469664606 |location=Chapel Hill, NC}}</ref>{{Rp|page=55}} In the Chinese communist view of the book, Uncle Tom was interpreted as having been betrayed by his "Christian consciousness."<ref name=":Gao" />{{Rp|page=55}} In 1961, [[Sun Weishi]] directed a stage play adaptation of the book.<ref name=":Gao" />{{Rp|page=55}} The revival of interest in ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' intersected with the translation and popularization of works by [[W. E. B. Du Bois]], who was viewed as having developed a new spirit of Black resistance.<ref name=":Gao" />{{Rp|pages=54–55}}