In January 2022, Knoxville, Tennessee’s Nirvana Comics kicked off a GoFundMe to raise money and purchase copies of Maus. Their plan was to give away the copies to local students as well as those across the US. Students interested in getting one.
The fundraising effort was in response to a Tennessee school board’s vote of 10-0 to ban the graphic novel from being used to teach about the Holocaust in school. The school board claims some of the language and images are offensive.
A little over a year later, Nirvana Comics has raised over $100,000 and given away 1,000s of copies of Maus for free across the US and the world.
The comic store has continued their mission by “doing outreach programs to use comics to teach kids” and also founded their own Free Little Library for kids.
Check out some of the highlights of their updates on their ongoing project below. You can read the full posts here and here.
One year ago something happened, maybe you’ve heard the story? In response to the local banning of the book Maus we decided to give away whatever copies we had for free to students! This rather modest plan to combat censorship soon began to grow and we launched a fundraising initiative in order to give away as many copies of Maus for free as possible. Because of you all, because so many people showed up and donated, we were able to raise over $100,000 in a week and give away literally a thousand copies of the book Maus for free across the US and around the world!
Since then we’ve worked to continue this mission by doing outreach programs to use comics to teach kids, and founding our own Free Little Library that kids can use. It’s our goal to never let a price tag stand in the way of kids and reading!
There’s just one more story to tell.
As we were locking up today one last car pulled up. A woman came into our shop and asked about the free copies of Maus.
After she received her copy she kindly thanked us and then revealed she was a child holocaust survivor. A Dutch child smuggled away at the age of 2 while her parents went on to Auschwitz.
This.
This is why we did this y’all, because we truly believe the more people are taught about this, the less likely it is to happen again.
Remembering all that happened last year and this weekend, the long hours, the harassment, the threats, the non stop work. It was all worth it.
Tomorrow we’ll open up our doors and business will resume, but the impact you made by donating your time, your money, and in several cases used copies of Maus. The impact will still be there.
Thank you for being a part of this journey with us!
Source: Graphic Policy
