I ALSO like that he presents both his therapist and his father's remarried wife as people who both set Art straight in that the Holocaust didn't make him the man he is. It fucked him up, it AMPLIFIED certain bad things but it did everyone dirty differently
Art's therapist who's also a survivor is asked by Art what it was like living through the Holocaust, emotionally.
He does a jump BOO! scare on Art, and says it was a little like that...but all the time.
I liked that he put it in a frame of reference anyone could understand while also explaining the emotional exhaustiveness of it all. When you're on hyperalert all the time, it breaks you down in so many ways.
The holocaust was so huge and terrible that histories can end up as cold statistics.
I grew up with family stories from survivors.
Maus does an incredible job of capturing the human suffering.
Revisited this again in class last year when some of the book bans were going on. One of the stated reasons the crazies wanted to remove it from classrooms because of this "nudity." Oh, and the word "bitch."
(Man, doing alt text of graphic novels is really difficult.)
Read it in middle school. It really opened my eyes. I should probably reread it
Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda was inspired by it I believe. It's about the Rwandan genocide
It's a super quick read, I grabbed it a couple summers ago when it showed up on some conservative list of books to remove from schools. Anyway, really good and easy to get through quickly.
In the Shadow of No Towers is also worth reading - a good examination of what it feels like to be an artist rooted by choice and family in a nation going mad.
