I wasn’t planning for this to be my 7th book of the year, but here it is. I have finished Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman. This is a graphic novel that was created to tell the story of a survivor from WW2. Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek, a Jewish man, had gone through the horrors that WW2 held, and he came out of it alive. Spiegelman wanted to share this story, his father and mother accounts of the war.
This isn’t something I would normally read out of the blue. I was assigned this book for my Survey of American Literature class. But having read it, I am glad I have. There are so many things in this story that aren’t widely known, or talked about. I learned a lot and I do believe, even though there are so really hard topics in this book, that this book should be taught in schools. Not just college level, but high school as well. This is a part of history that needs to be shared even more, before we start losing it to the restrictions of today.
I highly recommend this book to everyone. There is some really hard topics in it and graphic imagery, but it does the job in telling the story. I will be talking about the second half of this book Maus 2 at a later time, when we finish reading it in class.