A review by cstein
Maus: A Survivor's Tale. My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

challenging dark emotional funny informative lighthearted reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

Spiegelman's decision to draw rather than merely write this memoir importantly limits the reader's imagination, leaving drastically less room for confusion, wrong interpretation, or willful ignorance of the facts of his and his father's experiences. In a similarly ingenious way, Spiegelman's cartoon animal characters provide sufficient whimsy and distance from the horrors of the Holocaust to make the work readable, while also prompting frequent pauses to reflect on how the emotions and horrors experienced by these cartoon animals are actually those experienced by very much non-cartoon people. Phew.

As the Newsweek review of this work reads, in part, "Maus compels us to bear witness in a different way: the very artificiality of its surface makes it possible to imagine the reality beneath." 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Confinement, Death, Suicide, Antisemitism, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Chronic illness, Cursing, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, and Deportation

Minor: Racial slurs, Racism, Excrement, Vomit, and War