This is Volume 2 of Maus. It is my copy. In my Haus. I believe we have Volume 1, but I wasn't immediately able to find it - my collection is in a bit of a reorganization effort right now. It may be that Benjamin has it.
Maus is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Graphic Novel written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman. It tells of his family's experience with the Nazis and the Holocaust. It is not pretty, but it is exceptionally well and powerfully told. It uses the allegory of Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats.
If you follow my blog, you know I am an avid reader of comic books and graphic novels. So, when I tell you that, of the tens of thousands I have read, Maus ranks at the very top, that should carry some weight.
To me, the idea that the Tennesse School Board is banning this book is utterly horrifying. This critical and seminal book, which effectively shows the horrors of the Holocaust, particularly to young readers, is being banned from the places where it could do the most good. Its banning effectively either silences or trivializes this important event. An event that must be seared in all our brains so that it CAN NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
In some ways, this is just another salvo in the idiotic culture wars this nation has to endure. The authoritarian side of the ledger (I'm sorry - it's hard to even call them Republicans anymore - they've gone so far off the bend beyond simple advocacy of conservative principals) is constantly bringing up distractions to get us to ignore the real needs in this country - universal health care, climate change, the income gap, fighting COVID, adequate and affordable child care, racial inequality.
Now, led by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, they would like to quash the teaching of anything that remotely discomforts white people. Can't dwell on slavery being bad. Can't point out how our laws and legal systems reinforce racial inequality. Can't talk about how our genocide of indigenous peoples was one of the inspirations and templates used by the Nazis for the Holocaust.
And, yes. I know these culture war issues are brought mainly to gin the rest of us up. They love our outrage and feed off of it. Then, they use it for fundraisers and to further divide us.
So, congratulations, It worked. I'm ginned up and angry.
But you won't win. I already have Maus, and Benjamin can read it anytime, again and again. Maus is now #2 on the Amazon Best Seller list. That's of ALL books, not just graphic novels. I'm sure more young readers are seeking this out more than ever before.
Of course, this is not the only time that a Tennessee School Board has acted out in a censoring, moronic fashion. In the 1920s, they tried to ban the teaching of evolution. This led to one of the most famous courtroom trials of all time, the Scopes Monkey Trial, prosecuting a teacher for even mentioning the possibility of evolution. The trial featured the rhetorical skills of the most successful defense lawyer of that time, Clarence Darrow, and three-time Presidential candidate and devout fundamentalist, William Jenning Bryan.
I know about this because, in 9th Grade, my Drama class did an in-class one act from the play based on the trial, Inherit the Wind, where I got to play the Clarence Darrow part. To this day, it is hands down my favorite play. It's been my great white acting whale to play one of the two lawyers in a community theatre production. In the late 70s, when I lived in Cartersville, Georgia, they performed the play. I tried out and got the part of Scopes, the Tennessee teacher. Odd, playing a part with a distinct Southern accent when I was a Yankee that had just moved to the South. But, hey, I'm a good actor. What else can I say?
I've waited patiently for another theatre to perform it, but it does not look like that will happen. Too many male parts. Too controversial. And what does that say about the time that now Inherit the Wind is too controversial to perform?
Come to think of it, I don't know if a school system would be allowed to use it in the current environment. After all, one of the characters uses the word damn. And it could be seen as critical to fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity (although the play is much more balanced than you would think). So, if I were a student in school now, I might not even know about the Scopes Monkey trial.
Not that the time I was educated was perfect. I didn't even know about the Tulsa massacre until recent years. Much of the Civil Rights era was skipped over*, and even living up North in Michigan, the teaching of the Civil War was infested by Lost Cause mythology and a diminishment of the importance of slavery as a cause.
In the end, Maus will survive. Censorship of something this important will backfire.
But I am so tired of the culture wars. So, so tired and angry.
FIND MAUS.
READ MAUS.
REMEMBER WHAT IT TELLS YOU.
DON"T LET THEM ERASE HISTORY.
*it was skipped over in part because it was still ongoing when I was in school. They tended to run out of time in American History class and tried to squeeze in the last twenty to thirty years into the last week.
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