The Fight Over ‘Maus’ Is Part of a Bigger Cultural Battle in Tennessee
The New York Times
State lawmakers, led by the governor, are rethinking what public school students should read and learn.
ATHENS, Tenn. — After the McMinn County School Board voted in January to remove “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its eighth-grade curriculum, the community quickly found itself at the center of a national frenzy over book censorship.
The book soared to the top of the Amazon best-seller list. Its author, Art Spiegelman, compared the board to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and suggested that McMinn officials would rather “teach a nicer Holocaust.” At a recent school board meeting, opponents of the book’s removal spilled into an overflow room.
But the outcry has not persuaded the school board to reconsider. And the board’s objections do not stop at “Maus” or the school district’s Holocaust education materials.
