The book Maus by Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer. According to Amazon …
The first installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker).
A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.
Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history’s most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
This week, a Tennessee school board voted to ban Maus. Says Spiegelman …
“It’s part of a continuum, and just a harbinger of things to come. The control of people’s thoughts is essential to all of this.”
Sound rather Orwellian? Well, guess what … George Orwell’s most famous novel, 1984, has been banned repeatedly in many places in the U.S. along with other classics such as The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, and a host of others.
Schools and libraries that have banned books are essentially depriving young people of the opportunity to learn, to become functional adults who understand both what is right and what is wrong with the world we live in. The latest trend in education seems to be to whitewash history or teach a revisionist version of history and this is just WRONG! We are told that it is wrong to teach something that might make students feel ‘uncomfortable.’ Bullshit! Life can sometimes be very uncomfortable, but we cannot simply don our rose-coloured glasses and turn a blind eye to such things as racism, police brutality, an over-reaching government, or the darker periods in history such as the Holocaust, slavery, Jim Crow, and more. Reality is … you cannot bury the past and expect future generations to understand what NOT to do!
After reading about the decision to ban Maus, I started digging a bit to see what other books have been banned and … my jaw dropped all the way to the floor! A few examples …
Toni Morrison’s Beloved … Set after the American Civil War, it tells the story of a family of former slaves whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Beloved is inspired by an event that actually happened: Margaret Garner, an enslaved person in Kentucky, who escaped and fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856. She was subject to capture in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; when U.S. marshals burst into the cabin where Garner and her husband had barricaded themselves, she was attempting to kill her children, and had already killed her two-year-old daughter, to spare them from being returned to slavery. Beloved has been banned from at least five U.S. schools.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number 17th. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Color Purple is a powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, depicting the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston, is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston’s best known work. The novel explores main character Janie Crawford’s “ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny”. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received. Since the late 20th century, it has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women’s literature. TIME included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.
That classic tale by Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, was once banned in Mississippi schools because one parent reported that “her son was uncomfortable with the N-word.” Reality, my friends, is often harsh, but we must learn from it! How are we to improve, become better people than our ancestors were, if we hide the truth, turn a blind eye to the past?
And the list goes on … and on … and on.
Last year, a group in Tennessee calling themselves “Moms for Liberty” demanded that lessons about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ruby Bridges be cut for being divisive, lessons about civil rights crackdowns be cut for “negative views of firemen and police,” and even took issue with a book about … seahorses, claiming that the seahorses were shown being ‘sexy’! For the love of Pete, where are these damn fools coming from???
Now, I could understand if schools were banning something along the lines of how-to sex manuals or tips for getting away with murder, but the books being banned are those that teach the valuable lessons of history, both in this country and others. Our young people MUST learn about our past, must learn what we did right as well as what we did wrong, otherwise in no way will they be prepared to enter the world of adulthood, the real world!
Banning books … there is nothing to justify it and it is eerily reminiscent of times and places that led to horrible outcomes. Are we destined to keep repeating the same history, the same mistakes, over and over until the human species finally obliterates itself? Think about it.
Note to Readers: Just as I finished editing and scheduling this post, I saw a post by John Pavlovitz along these lines and he says it better than I, so if you have a minute, drop in and read his view, too!
Another Note to Readers: Annie over at AnnieAsksYou also wrote on this topic today and I think you’ll find much of her information to be surprising and enlightening! Thank you, Annie!
Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2019) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. It brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. 
In 2016, the Little Bill series written by Bill Cosby was banned because of the sexual allegations against Mr. Cosby … not because of anything in the books, and frankly I have read those books to my granddaughter and it is an excellent series. But some, it seems, would throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Today, with the far-right evangelicals attempting to impose their own beliefs on society as a whole … a group that is anti-LGBT, anti-women’s rights, anti-immigrants, anti-everyone-who-is-not-Christian … it is more important than ever that we guard against censorship in our schools and libraries. Books open pathways in our minds, delight us with the unknown, and teach … teach us about other cultures, other lifestyles. I find it frightening that some communities would stifle the knowledge and pleasure that is to be found in books of all sorts. Censorship is just another form of bigotry.
Cornyn is a graduate from Trinity University and St. Mary’s University School of Law, receiving his LL.M. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Cornyn was a Judge on Texas’ 37th District Court from 1985 to 1991, until he was elected an associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court, where he served 1991 to 1997. In 1998, Cornyn was elected Attorney General of Texas, serving one term until winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2002. He was re-elected to a second term in 2008 and to a third term in 2014.
Atticus Finch, you may remember, played by Gregory Peck, was a lawyer in a small fictional southern town of Maycomb, Alabama. Finch was representing a black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. The character of Atticus Finch represents morality and reason. He is soft-spoken, believes in fighting for justice and equality, and is a moral hero in every sense of the word.
For those who might not have been aware, this week, September 23-29, is Banned Books Week. Because I seem to have slipped back into the rabbit hole and cannot bring myself to write about any of the detritus swirling about in cyberspace today, I am instead writing about Banned Books Week.
Thirteen Reasons Why has been challenged and banned for discussing suicide. Well, guess what folks? Not discussing something doesn’t make it go away! Suicide among teens is a very real concern, for the teen years are a time of transition, a time when hormones are going crazy and life is confusing. It happens. Kids kill themselves. Not talking about it doesn’t make it go away! Parents rarely talk to their kids about suicide, fearing that an open, frank discussion might put the idea into their head. Perhaps this book is just the ticket for giving kids a better grasp of how to deal with their problems, what to do when they feel there is no other way out.
Filosofa's Word 