On February 2, an ultra pastor from Tennessee, Greg Locke, organized a bonfire near the musical city of Nashville to burn copies of the Harry Potter and Twilight sagas in a ceremony that was conveniently broadcast on Facebook and that aimed to combat the “demonic influence” of literature that reaches young people in the community. It can be said that Locke was taking advantage of the tailwind. The week before, his status had made the news because the McMinn County School Board had unanimously agreed to withdraw Maus (1992), Art Spiegelman’s award-winning Holocaust comic, off the reading list of 13-year-olds for its profanity and depiction of a “naked female body representation,” despite the fact that the characters in the novel is cats (the Nazis) and mice (the Jews).
Governments and parent associations try to prevent hundreds of titles that address racism or sex from being available to students: from ‘Maus’ to ‘Beloved’, through ‘Fun House’ or ‘Be yourself’
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