When I went to order, I saw that there was Maus I and Maus II. I opted to purchase both. As of today, June 8, 2023, I have only read the first book but will definitely finish reading the second book prior to the birthday which isn't until the 16th.
First impression was why is this book being banned? It's such an important story to be shared. Having a book like this in graphic format makes the story accessible to a wide swath of readers who wouldn't read it any other way. (I'm not much of a fan of graphic novels and it took me several tries, starting over from the beginning each time, to get into the format and style of the writing, to be able to follow the story.) Why is it being banned? Because people in power don't want our youth to be informed. They don't want them to learn from history so they can learn from our (collective) past mistakes. THAT is the real tragedy today.
Was it banned because it used the word "shit" a few times? Really? I still struggle to figure out why it's banned, even when reading articles about why it is banned. The modified swastika on the cover? The story is about the rise of the Nazis and Nazism. It's not like a swastika is being proudly displayed. Is that a reason to ban a book?
In Maus I, Spiegelman relays his father's story of what it was like to live in Poland in the 1930s as the Nazis are invading the country. Spiegelman's mother father and mother have just met and married. Life for them changes drastically. The book includes Spiegelman asking his father about his experiences during that time, starting with questions about his mother who had killed herself several years before. It includes interactions Spiegelman has with his father's new wife which would be funny if they weren't so sad.
June 9, 2023 update
I finished Maus II yesterday. Spiegelman's descriptions of life with in the concentration camps and in the days as the war ended and just after it was over gave small details that I've never read about in any other Holocaust book. I really appreciated that Spiegelman repeatedly had his character, Artie, struggle with understanding the realities of the Holocaust. He'd heard about it all his life, but acknowledged that unless you were there, you cannot ever put yourself in the place of someone who experienced it.
Another thing that I really valued in this second was volume was Artie's story, the personal story of the relationship with his father and what it was like for him to be a child of survivors. If you read my review of A Life Inherited that I read a few weeks ago, you know I was looking to better understand the psyche of a child of survivors. Spiegelman gave me more of what I was looking for in that regard than Rena Lipiner Katz did in her memoir. Much of what Artie expressed reminded me of words I'd heard my ex-husband, child of survivors, utter or behaviors I saw him exhibit. I never met my former husband's parents but I imagine that the relationship he had with his parents was so similar to the one in Maus II. In my former husband's case, his father passed away several years before his mother which made my former husband's story different. But had his mother gone first, the struggles between the father and son would have been almost identical. I wonder what Spiegelman's life is like now. Is he happily married? Are his kids well-adjusted?
I'm still confounded as to why anyone would think it was a good idea to ban these books. If you've got young people in your life who enjoy graphic novels, I suggest making sure they have these books to read.
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