Maus and all our stories

On Friday, I finally received the purchase order I'd been waiting a l-o-n-g time for and went to Borders to pick up the graphic novels I'd ordered for the bibliophobic teens in the mentoring program (to try to coax them to read something). Not being a graphic novel reader myself, I had to rely on input from an educator who uses graphic novels in his teaching. Because of that, I took them all home this weekend to do a quick "content check."

I started with Maus: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. In graphic novel format, Spiegelman tells the true story of his father, a Holocaust survivor, as well as the experience of interviewing his father for the book. "Quick content check" forgotten, I curled up by the window and read the whole book. It's fabulous. Raw and tragic? Yes...but also a story of survival...and relationships...and wit. I know there's at least one sequel so I'll have to find it. I think this is the first graphic novel I've ever read so don't let that stop you from reading Maus either.

Of course, I love reading memoirs, biographies, autobiographies. I like hearing other people's stories. Maybe that's one of the reasons I chose my profession. I think it's also one of the reasons I like Frederick Buechner's writings so much:

But I talk about my life anyway because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.

(BTW, if you're wondering about content in Maus, of course it contains "mature themes," as it is about the Holocaust. However, the deaths are depicted more symbolically than explicitly. I did use a black marker to censor a few swear words, two frames with bare breasts and a frame with someone cutting her wrist with a razor-- since this is middle school and cutting is an issue. There are also suicides...but again, this is all true so I don't expect the author to sanitize it to make it more palatable. I feel that this is a good book for the middle school students in the mentoring program to read with their mentors, who can answer questions and offer guidance. I wouldn't suggest it for kids younger than that.)