WASHINGTON: The School Board in Tennessee has added a surge in book prohibition by conservative with orders to remove the 1986 graphics novel that won awards in the Holocaust, “Maus,” from the local student library.
Spiegelman art writer told CNN Thursday – International Holocaust commemoration days by chance – that the ban on his book for rough language is “myopic” and represents the problem of “bigger and stupid” than its specific work.
The ban, was decided by the McMinn District Education Council in Tennessee Timur on January 10, triggering national thumbs among the supporters of literary freedom after it became many known in the past few days.
It is the latest controversy over conservatives trying to clean the school library of the books they found, focusing on works that offer alternatives to traditional views on US history and culture, especially from the African-American viewpoint, LGBTQ youth, and Another minority.
“Maus” was highly recognized when published as compilation of the Spiegelman series of his father’s experience, a Polish Jew, with the Nazis and in the concentration camp during the Holocaust.
The book, which describes the character in the story as a animal – Jews are mice and Germany are cats – win Pulitzer prizes and other awards, and are accepted into many secondary schools as a depiction of millions of millions of people who are strong and accurate. Jews during World War II.
Prohibition by the McMinn District School Authority despite focusing on the use of eight rude words such as “damn” and “bitch” and one nudity scene, some of the parents say inappropriate for school children.
“There are some rough languages, unpleasant in this book,” said the School Board Director Lee Parkison, who proposed only translating the parts of the book.
But others argue that, while teaching teenagers about Holocaust is needed, different books are needed.
“This shows people who depend, it shows them to kill children; why the education system promotes this kind of thing, it’s not wise or healthy,” asked the board member Tony Allman.
– ‘Some bad words’ –
Others defend the book. But they recognize the possibility of legal challenges for copyright and sensors who make book back can bring, and choose with opponents to remove them from the local school library at all.
“They really focused on some of the bad words in the book … I don’t believe it,” said Spiegelman to CNN from his home in Switzerland.
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The US Holocaust Museum, who documented Nazi’s atrocities against Jews, greatly questioned the ban.
“Teaching about Holocaust using books such as ‘maus’ can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today,” he said in a statement.
Jewish groups are also very important.
“Given the lack of knowledge about the Holocaust in the US, especially among younger Americans, the decision of the Tennessee school board to ban the maus … beyond understanding,” said David Harris, chief executive of the American Jewish committee.
The prohibition of “maus” was added to the list of what was called cultural war fighting where conservatives had forced local schools to write books, especially those written with ethnic and gender minority perspectives.
In October, a Texas school district while attracted a copy of the book, “New Children,” which explains “micro aggression” that is accidentally an African American child suffers from their skin color.
In Virginia, parents struggled to have a book that was praised “Beloved” by black writer Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize winner for the literature, removed from the reading list.
In York County, Pennsylvania in October, students struggled to reverse book prohibitions, including works about South African icons Nelson Mandela and Pakistani activists Malala Yousafzai, and a lot about minority children.
While almost all the recent attacks on books for students coming from the right, in the past few years left have also acted to force school to drop some old popular classics.
The target has included “Huckleberry Finn” and “to kill Mockingbird” because they use anti-black nicknames and the negative characterization of African-Americans related to white Americans.