Last term we talked about who has the right to tell stories. Whether truth could only come from those who have experienced something directly, or could anyone tell each others story? I, Rigoberta Menchu is a story of an indigenous Guatemalan woman, she emphasizes that her account is a testimony of all indigenous peoples experiences. She believes she has a right to share this testimony accurately because she lived through the struggles described in her book. Menchu wrote about how her people’s history had been muddied because white people had the predominant voice to explain the circumstances of the indigenous. It is very important to her that she told her stories as an indigenous woman. In high school, we read a book called Little Bee, a fictional story of a Nigerian girl refugee in the United Kingdom. We discussed how qualified the author was to write this novel, given that he is a white man who had never known a Nigerian girl refugee. Is he allowed to tell this story even if it is completely made up? I do not think so because it is supposed to represent a current issue and comment on a political matter from the perspective of a group that the author is not a part of or connected to.
I think that Art Spiegelman has dealt with similar questions pertaining to his right to tell his father’s story in Maus. Could his proximity to his father and the events give him enough licenses to rightly publish a book about it? Is his father the only one who could accurately describe the horrors of the holocaust? I do not know, Spiegelman had a lot of power and ability in his storytelling, because it was represented with pictures. The medium of graphic novel gave him more agency to illustrate the story in a voice that was not his father’s. The characters are represented as mice and cats, but this is an interpretation done by Art and not his father. On the other hand, Spiegelman is part of a group who was affected by the holocaust, he is jewish and his family directly bears a huge burden. There is a level of generational trauma experienced by Art which gives him a particular lense to write his story through.
Spiegelman is aware of this dilemma. He feels guilt associated with not having lived through the holocaust himself while benefiting from his father’s experience. He questions his place to be able to use a story not his own. I think that there is a connection between survivors guilt and the right to tell certain stories. In the case of Maus, it would have been impossible for Spiegelman’s father to tell his own story, he died before the book was complete. He was not an author or illustrator either. Many important experiences are held by people who have died, their story can only be told by someone else. This can worsen the survivors guilt because they have to acknowledge again and again that they did not die or escaped the pain. It must have been painful for Spiegelman to listen to his father’s story and know he could never truly understand. Beyond not being able to understand, he watched his novel become a bestseller in his name. There are a pile of issues weighing on Spiegelman. He had not gone through the pain his family did, does his privilege prevent him from writing an accurate story? He survived and made money because of those who did not. I do not think that Art Spiegelman is at fault, but I can imagine that he has guilt to overcome.