Glass shattering in flames, our hothouse bed

[sovay]

If left to myself, I don't happen to observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it still registers that the first news I saw when I got onto the internet after a separately difficult night was the banning of Art Spiegelman's Maus (1991) by a Tennessee school board on grounds of nudity and inappropriate language. Any impediment to the teaching of the reality of the Holocaust is, I am sure, one hundred percent inadvertent, regrettable, and just to be lived with. Nothing personal. Some people's children must be protected from knowledge that others are never permitted to live without, but then, some people's children are really people.

Comments

[sara]

We had to pass it around under desks at my high school not because it was about the Holocaust but because it was a comic book and therefore Bad For Us. I hope the kids at this middle school line up their own bootleg copies.

[lauradi7dw]

A fund has been set up (or at least proposed) to make available a bunch of free copies at the local indie book store. Others have pointed out that the kids of the parents in question would not be allowed to own their free copy, and some of their classmates wouldn't have access to the store.

[sara]

Yeah, when I see critique like that, I think that there will always be someone who comes along to point out that someone who's trying to help isn't perfect. Which doesn't do much but make everyone feel helpless.

I am myself inclined to salt a few copies in my local free libraries. I think we could all do that. Solutions don't have to be perfect to be improvements.

Free libraries

[lauradi7dw]

What a great idea.

Re: Free libraries

[sara]

I read in the paper this morning that Maus is back on bestseller lists this week so I feel like the market of ideas is addressing this problem pretty assertively.

[sovay]

I am myself inclined to salt a few copies in my local free libraries. I think we could all do that.

I like your inclination.