The district in the Rio Grande Valley immediately agreed with activists who said the books were “filthy and evil.”
Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.
In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.
I'm still proud of the copy of "Maus" that I donated to the library of my shitty little Texas town before I moved out of that hell-hole a few years back. I still check the online catalog from time to time to make sure it's still in circulation.