Maus and the Power of Images

Art Spiegelman’s Maus almost single-handedly elevated comics from throw-away inserts in newspapers to a serious literary art worthy of winning the highest award in book publishing. But it’s not an accident that this book is coming back to us now. Maus was swept once again into the public eye three years ago, when the conservative movement to target marginalized stories took aim at the beloved graphic novel. In this episode, we examine how comic book censorship in the 1950s led to the creation of Maus, and eventually shifted the way we tell stories about resistance, memory, and authoritarianism.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website. Further resources:

• Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.
• Read Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch and Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood. You can read more about both of them on their websites.
• Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.
• Learn more about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the history of comic book censorship.
• Listen to our interviews with Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer, and Mike Curato, author of Flamer from our previous series, Borrowed and Banned.
• Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.