In Athens, Tennessee, the school board of McMinn County has decided to ban a book titled “Maus” by Art Spiegelman.
“Maus” is a cartoon-based based book about the author’s father and his life during World War II as a Jewish man in Poland. According to the New York Times, the school board made their decision based on strong language and an illustration of a nude woman.
In his book, the Germans are represented as cats, the Polish are represented as pigs and dogs are represented as Americans and the Jewish are represented as mice.
One of my favorite quotes from Spiegelman, found in the same New York Time’s article, is, “This is disturbing imagery. But You know what? It’s disturbing history.”
And he’s right.
The opposition has right-ness too. There is a nude woman in the comics: Spiegelman’s dead mother.
Near the end of the story, he tells of his mother’s suicide and how that affected him and his family. His mother was found naked in a bathtub, and that is the image the school board is worried about.
My problem with this logic is that it shows only her breasts, and it is definitely not a sexual image. Slightly horrifying, absolutely, but not sexual in the slightest.
The language they mentioned could be the harsh ways the Jewish were talked to in the past, or they could be referring to a comic where the mother is called a an expletive for what she has done.
Could this be understood without the language? Yes. Could it be understood without the picture? Yes.
Regardless of their reasoning, it is wrong.
When it comes to a school board, they don’t have control over just one area. They have authority over all of the schools in the area.
Is “Maus” appropriate for kids in elementary school? Perhaps not, but the ban is school-wide, including middle and high schools. They want a cleaner version to teach, but where does censorship end?
Most books I read in school had strong language, violence and sexual imagery. Are they no longer going to teach “The Great Gatsby”, Greek art and sculptures, “Romeo and Juliet,” “White Fang” and so many more?
As someone who takes an interest in banned books, I’ve looked at the officially listed ones, and almost none of them should be on that list, least of all “Maus.”
