LogFAQs > #962157104

I imagine this is a non-issue for some people, and still others have hardly heard of the title, but Art Spiegelman's Maus, a graphic novel that relays the story of the Holocaust through the lens of cats and mice, was banned by a school district in Tennessee this week. I find it particularly troubling because, as many of you know, I am an avid comic book reader. Maus was a title I discovered through my high school English literature class, and it propelled me to begin reading more independent titles in the sector. I returned to it again in college as the subject of one of my term papers. The tale of Maus is an intimate one, weaving a careful line between accuracy and poignancy, and as I've recently dealt with the aging and senescence of my elderly grandparents, the story's quiet but starkly realistic depiction of old age often leaves me teary-eyed.

It truly boggles my mind that, as a society, we allow non-literary minds to dictate what passes for appropriate literature. In the past, censorship focused on scrutinizing for foul language, gratuitous violent practices and sexual whatevers, but today, I think that it is less about an overly protective Puritanical desire to shelter children and more about the sheer ignorance people have when it comes to anything that they can't read on social media, anything with more than 50 words and a picture. Maus, for me, was foundational in my comic book critical thought and also my literary thought as well. It is, without a doubt, the most important depiction of the Holocaust in history, artfully crafted, and truly emotionally resonant even to someone with no real connections to those terrible days 80 years ago.

I guess I don't know why I felt the need to post about this, but it's been hard to see something that means so much to me being pulled out of the hands of the next generation, even if it's just one backwater district in one backwater state.