ArtsConnect Literary Roundtable on September 21 Featuring "Maus" and "Fun Home"

***The books are available to borrow in the church office - first come first served! 

Join us for Literary Roundtable as part of our ArtsConnect series on September 21 at 6:00 pm in the FPC Chapel. Our hosts will lead a discussion about family and identity as related to the frequently banned books "Maus" and "Fun Home".

Books: Maus (Art Spiegelman) and Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)

Hosts:

• Joanna Grisham is an instructor in the Department of Languages & Literature at APSU. Joey holds an MFA in creative writing from Georgia College. She was named a finalist for the 2021-2022 Very Short Fiction Contest at the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival and a finalist for the 2021 Ember Chasm Review Flash Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Gleam, The Emerson Review, On the Run, The Write Launch, Construction Literary Magazine, and other places. Her first chapbook of poems, Phantoms, is forthcoming in 2023 from Finishing Line Press.
• Gregory Glover is pastor at First Presbyterian Church. Greg holds a Ph.D. in biblical studies from Princeton Theological Seminary and is an avid reader.

Discussion Themes: Family, Identity, and Book Bans

1) How does the medium (graphic novel/narrative/memoir, comic) affect how the content is received...and is there any content that is just too heavy for or incompatible with such a format?

2) Should these books be readily available to children, promoted and included in curricula for juveniles? If so, at what age and in what context? ...and who should get to decide?

3) What are the points of comparison between the two works and how does each address the portrayal of suicide (or possible suicide or self-harm) and death? How are difficult and challenging family relationships portrayed in each?

4) How is religion portrayed in each (Judaism, Christianity, Islam [bringing Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi into the conversation]...the trifecta) and are the portrayals real/convincing/appropriate to the context?

The story of Vladek Speigelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books.  This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter.  A narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny.